The Effectiveness of Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) on Marital Intimacy

The present study aims at investigating the effectiveness of prevention and relationship enhancement program (PREP) on increasing marital intimacy. To do so, 24 couples who referred to state and private counseling centers to enhance their marital intimacy were selected. They were then randomly divided into two groups including prevention and relationship enhancement program (12 couples), and control group (12 couples). The type of the research was semiexperimental (pretest-posttest with control design). Educational intervention (prevention and relationship enhancement program) including 11 sessions (1.5 hours) was applied on the experiment group. Results indicated that the intervention (prevention and relationship enhancement program) had a significant effect on marital intimacy. Furthermore, the prevention and relationship enhancement program had positive and significant effect on nine component of marital intimacy including emotional, intellectual, physical, social, communicational, spiritual, psychological, sexual, and total intimacy.