The Effect of Marital Frustration and Sexual Diversity in Predicting Married Men's Extramarital Relationships

In recent years, extramarital relationships have been increasing. Extramarital relationships are a phenomenon that often occurs due to the satisfaction of a person's emotional needs through extramarital relationships, and it is considered one of the main reasons for divorce and harming couples. The most important motivation of married men and women who are drawn to illicit relationships is to re-experience personal and sexual intimacy, and sexual diversification is a phenomenon that often occurs due to the satisfaction of a person's emotional and sexual needs through extramarital relationships, which as a characteristic It is considered a character or a kind of preparation for marital infidelity. Situational and communication factors can play a decisive role on couple interactions and family health. Marital frustration is an unpleasant condition that results from an unfavorable cycle in a couple's relationship and includes a decrease in attention towards the spouse, emotional alienation and an increase in a kind of feeling of disinterest and indifference towards the spouse. With the increase of frustration, it can be expected that the couple's relationship will be in a stagnation, and the amount of emotional and sexual interactions between them will decrease, and it will prepare the ground for extramarital relations. Extramarital relations as a hidden social problem of Iranian society is a multi-dimensional damage whose consequences endanger the institution of family, raising children, health and security of society. They refer to extramarital relations as a growing social problem whose factors are different according to individual social and interpersonal conditions. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of determining the role of sexual diversity and marital frustration in predicting married men's extramarital relationships.

The present study was a correlational descriptive study. The research population included all married men in Tehran in 2022-2023, of which 303 eligible people were selected by available sampling method. The criteria for entering the research included being male, married, living in Tehran, being at least 25 and at most 65 years old, having literacy. The criterion for leaving the research was being single and incompletely completing the questionnaires. The research tools were sexual diversity questionnaires by Aref Nazari et al. (2011), Marital Disillusionment by Niehuis and Bartel (2006) and Whatley's Extramarital Relationships (2008). Ethical considerations including the confidentiality of the answers with the researcher, no coercion to participate in the research, and providing the interpretation of the answers to the participants if requested by the subjects were observed. To analyze the data, Pearson's correlation test and multiple regression were used with the help of SPSS version 22 statistical software.

According to the results, the highest frequency was related to the age of 36 to 45 years with 138 people (45.5 percent); And most of the sample members had one child (119 people); And more than 140 people (46.2 percent) were married between 11 and 20 years, and finally, the highest frequency was in undergraduate education with 132 people (43.6 percent). The results showed that there was a direct relationship between sexual diversity (r=0.598) and marital frustration (r=0.570) with extramarital relationships (p<0.01). Also, sexual diversity and marital frustration explain 54.5% of the variance of extramarital relationships. The value of the standardized regression coefficient (Beta) for the diversity of sexual behavior (p<0.01, β=0.254), moral orientation (p<0.01, β=0.248), intimacy seeking (p<0.01, 0.243 =β) and marital frustration (p<0.01, β=0.197). Therefore, it was concluded that sexual diversity and marital frustration positively and significantly predict extramarital relationships in married men.

Regarding the limitations of the current research, it can be said that the meaning of words such as sexual diversity and extramarital relations have a cultural meaning in our country, so the use of such words in the questionnaires may have created a special emotional sensitivity that could influence the answers. . Since the research community is limited to men who refer to counseling centers, this issue can create limitations in the field of external validity of the research. Therefore, it is suggested that future researches should be conducted with a larger sample size and a wider geographical area in order to provide dense and coherent literature about the method of applying the variables of this research. It is also suggested that future researches should be conducted longitudinally and in the group of women, so that it is possible to compare the results at different times. to be Also, it is necessary to teach the correct methods of satisfying the sexual and emotional needs of the spouse during marital counseling, and to hold educational workshops by organizations related to family issues in order to raise the awareness of couples regarding the consequences of extramarital relationships on the psychological health of family members. In general, according to the results of the research, sexual diversity and marital frustration can affect the attitude towards extramarital relationships, so the results require the attention of counselors, therapists and psychologists in preventing extramarital relationships and the collapse of the family unit.