The Comparison of Marital Satisfaction between Traditional and non-Traditional Couples in Tehran

Recent sophisticated studies have shown that couples premarital relationships can predict the future marital satisfaction. This study was conducted to examine the relationship between the two mating types (traditional and non-traditional) with marital satisfaction. Mixed method research including both qualitative and quantitative parts was used in this study.
In quantitative part, Questionnaire data were collected for 150 individuals with random sampling who were in the time between 2 to 7 years after their marriage. They were asked to fill out the Enrich marital satisfaction inventory. We used intentionally sampling in qualitative part to choose people with the purpose of meeting specified prescribed criteria. In this part 12 individuals were interviwed.
Findings: Results of Analyzing the data by descriptive statistic methods, show no significance differences in marital satisfaction between these two groups. But the data were collected from qualitative part show that that non-traditional marriages are at greater risk for low marital satisfaction than traditional marriages and the ones who get married based on traditional mating, have higher scores in most subscales including secure attachment, communication, religiosity and role-acceptance.
types of mating are related to the future marital satisfaction and people can choose their spouses in the better way in order to achieve higher level of marital satisfaction.