Effectiveness of Olson circumplex model training on attachment styles and marital conflicts in couples exposed emotional divorce

Emotional divorce plays a vital role in family breakdown that its consequences are more than legal divorce. Attachment style and marital conflict are effective psychological factors in creating emotional distance between couples. Attachment styles provides a framework for understanding marital relationships and Conflict Management.This research was conducted aiming at determining the effectiveness of Olson circumplex model training on behaviors arising from attachment styles and marital conflicts. The study was a semi-experimental research of pretest-posttest type with a control group. 16 couples were selected among the applicants seeking couples' treatment to Neiestan clinic in the year 95-96, they were selected by using purposeful sampling method. After the interview, they were assigned to two experimental and control groups (two groups of eight couples) by random sampling. During the execution of the program, a couple in test group was went out. Before and after training, Gottman's emotional divorce questionnaire (1995), Collins & Reed attachment styles questionnaire (1990), Marital conflict questionnaire's Sanai (1387) were executed as research instruments in both groups, after collecting data, the findings that obtained from data analysis by covariance method indicated that there is a significant difference in conflict scores (F=7.778, Sig = 0.01) and maladaptive behaviors caused by avoidance (F= 11.873, Sig= 0.002) and anxiety attachment / ambivalence (F=22.611, Sig= 0.0001) between the two groupsbut there was no significant difference in the secure attachment variable (F= 2.549, Sig=0.123 )  (p< 0.05). According to the findings, this method seems to be effective in reducing marital conflict behaviors as well as behaviors arising from unsafe attachment styles.