Effect of Spiritual-Religious Interventions on Increasing the Sense of Calmness and Forgiveness in Women Who Have Experienced Marital

Marital infidelity can endanger the mental health of the victims and cause them to hate the cheating spouse; accordingly, it is necessary to identify and reinforce the factors that help relive this painful experience. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of spiritual-religious interventions on increasing the sense of calmness and forgiveness in women who have experienced marital infidelity.

This quasi-experimental study was conducted based on a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The study population consisted of all women who had experienced infidelity in district 2, Tehran, Iran, in2019. In total, 32 women who experienced marital infidelity were selected through convenience and snowball sampling methods. Subsequently, they were divided randomly into intervention and control groups. Furthermore, the intervention group was subjected to spiritual-religious interventions. The data were collected using a positive psychological states questionnaire. In addition, the data were analyzed in SPSS software (version 22) through analysis of covariance.

The results showed that spiritual-religious interventions had significant effects on increasing the sense of calmness (F= 99.47, P<0.05) and forgiveness (F= 94.98, P<0.05).

According to the findings of the present study, the spiritual-religious intervention can be used as an effective clinical method to increase the sense of calmness and forgiveness in women who have experienced marital infidelity. The results of this study can have several practical implications.