The Effect of Solution-Based Couple Therapy on Forgiveness, Emotional Self-Regulation and Marital Boredom of Couples Seeking Divorce

Solution-oriented therapy is one of the types of postmodern treatment approaches in the field of family and marriage, which emphasizes finding solutions by clients in collaboration with the therapist. The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of solution-oriented couple therapy on forgiveness, emotional self-regulation and marital boredom of couples seeking divorce.

The research was quasi-experimental with pre-test and post-test design with a control group. The statistical population included all couples seeking divorce who referred to the Social Emergency Center in Tehran in 1398. By available sampling method, 30 people were selected and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Research tools include demographic information checklist - researcher-made form, marital boredom scale (Pinez, 1996), interpersonal forgiveness scale (Ehteshamzadeh et al., 2010) and cognitive emotion regulation scale (Garnefski et al., 2001) was. The experimental group received 10 sessions of intervention 3 sessions per week for 2 hours but the control group did not receive any intervention. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation), t-test and multivariate analysis of covariance with SPSS / 26.

The results showed that solution-oriented couple therapy was effective in reducing marital boredom in the experimental group in the post-test phase (P <0.05). There was a significant difference between the mean forgiveness score and cognitive emotion regulation of the subjects in the two groups in the post-test stage (P <0.05).

Solution-based couple therapy has been able to reduce marital boredom and improve forgiveness skills and regulate couples' emotions. It is suggested that family counselors use this treatment method to help solve marital and family problems.