Marital Conflicts and Basic Needs: The Mediator Role of Spirituality

Introduce: The purpose of the present study was to develop and test a model for explaining marital conflict based on basic needs in choice theory through the mediating role of spirituality.

The present study was correlational with a structural equation method. 72 married participants (131 women, 41 men) were selected by a combined sampling method including cluster sampling and in each cluster by purposeful sampling. Each participant completed Marital Conflict Questionnaire (MCQ), Basic Needs Questionnaire and Spirituality Questionnaire.

The results indicated that the spirituality had a positive significant correlation with all five basic needs, whereas spirituality had a negative significant correlation with all five basic needs. Significant negative relationships were found between marital conflicts and love and belonging and fun needs. Also all five basic needs had positive significant correlation with each other.

spirituality played a mediating role in the relation between marital conflicts and survival, freedom and power needs but not for belonging/ love need and fun need. Furthermore, 5 percent of marital conflict variances and 23 percent of spirituality variances are explain by Glaser's basic needs.