The causal modeling of affective divorce in women based on dark personality traits: with mediating role of sexual self esteem

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the causal modeling of affective divorce based on the dark personality traits with the mediating role of sexual self-esteem among women in Ardabil. The statistical population of this study was all women in Ardabil who lived in this city in the autumn of 2019. One hundred and fifty women were selected randomly via clustering sampling method and participated in the study. The research method of present study was a descriptive- correlation. Gottman's Emotional Divorce Scale, Johnson & Webster's Dark Personality Assessment Questionnaire and Zeanah and Schwarz's Sexual Self-Esteem Questionnaire were used to collect data. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results showed that the dark personality traits of machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism have a positive and significant effect and sexual self-esteem has a negative and significant effect on emotional divorce. In addition to the direct effect, dark personality traits also indirectly affect emotional divorce through the mediation of sexual self-esteem. According to the VAF statistics, it was observed that 36.5% of the effect of Machiavellianism on emotional divorce, 31.7% of the effect of narcissism on emotional divorce and 34.5% of the effect of psychopathy on emotional divorce can be explained through sexual self-esteem. The results of the present study highlight the importance of purposeful interventions aimed at changing or modifying dark personality traits and strengthening sexual self-esteem to prevent or reduce emotional divorce.