The effect of emotional-focused couple therapy on the infertile couple's quality of relationship, marital conflict, and intimacy

The phenomenon of infertility, as a stressful event and challenge, has caused expansion distress in couple's life and led to many problems and harms for them. Accordingly, the present study carried out to investigate the effect of emotional-focused couple therapy on the couple's quality of relationship, marital conflict, and intimacy of the infertile couples. The method of the study was quasi-experimental with the pretest, post-test and control group design. The statistical population consisted of all infertile couples referred to infertility clinics of "Royan" and "Ghafghaz" in Ardabil city in 2016. The subjects were 18 people that were selected by convenient sampling method and each of them with their husbands were assigned randomly into two 18 subjects of control and experimental groups (two groups with 9 couples). The experimental group participated into 10 weekly sessions with 90 minutes of emotional-focused couple therapy and any intervention carried out for control group. The data gathered by applying the psychometrics instruments of intimacy scale of Walker & Thompson (1983), marital conflict questionnaire of Janbozorgi and Agah Harris 2011 and the quality of relationship inventory of Pierce, Sarason & Sarason (1991). The results of the multivariate analysis of covariance indicated that emotional-focused couple therapy was effective on increasing of intimacy (P