The Effectiveness of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy in Reducing Couples’ Marital Burnout and Women’s Body Image

In recent years, paying attention to the foundation of families and the factors affecting it has been taken into consideration. In this regard, this study was carried out with the aim of examining the effectiveness of emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT) in reducing couples’ marital burnout and women’s body image. This quasi-experimental study has a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The current study had a statistical sample constituting of all couples referring to Hamdelan Consulting Center in Zahedan in 2017. Twenty couples were selected using a convenience sampling method. They were then randomly assigned to the experimental group or the control group. Measurement tools were Pines Couple Burnout Measure (1996) and Cash Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire (1997). The experimental group received 15 sessions of the emotionally focused couple therapy; however, the control group did not receive such a training. After carrying out the intervention, the data were gathered and analyzed using a multivariate analysis of covariance. Results of the multivariate analysis of covariance showed that the emotionally focused couple therapy was effective in reducing physical burnout (F=16.82), mental burnout (F=11.81), couple’s emotional burnout (F=61.74) as well as appearance evaluation (F=39.09), appearance orientation (F=196.71), and women’s physical satisfaction (F=4.05) (p<0.05). However, results indicated that the emotionally focused couple therapy did not affect fitness evaluation (F=0.25), fitness orientation (F=1.02), and women’s body weight (F=0.84) (p>0.05). Given the results of the current study and the research background, the emotionally focused couple therapy can be recommended as an efficient interventional method to reduce couples’ marital burnout and improve women’s body image.