The Comparison of the Effectiveness of Emotion Focused Therapy and Gottman's Relationship Enrichment on Woman's Communication Patterns

One of the most important specifications of marital relationships in cycles and communicational patterns, which emerge among them anf may be fixing by repetition. Aim of this research was to comparison the effectiveness of Emotionally focused approach, Gottman’s relationship Enrichment on woman’s Communication patterns.

This research was a quasi-experimental field research with pre-posttest and control group with three-months follow up. The statistical population of the study consisted of women in Khomein city who referred to Faraz Counseling Center in 2017 due to communication problems with their spouses. 36 of them were selected by available sampling method and randomly assigned to two experimental and one control group. To collect the data, Communication Patterns Questionnaire (Christensen & Salvey, 1984) was used. To analyze the data, Ancova and Bonferroni analysis were used.

The findings showed that there was a significant difference in the communication patterns between the test and control groups in the post-test and follow up stages, so that the emotionally focused approach and enrichment of the relationship were able to significantly decrease the communication patterns Avoidance, Demand Withdraw and enhancement of mutual constructive communication model in both post-test and follow-up phases. Also, the results of the Bonferroni test showed that the difference between the group of emotionally focused approach and the Gottman enrichment group in women's communication patterns was meaningful; hence, the Gottman enrichment approach was more effective than the emotionally focused approach on communication patterns.

Therefore, it is possible to use both approaches, especially the Gottman's enrichment approach to improve couples' communication patterns and ultimately increase the quality of marital life.