The effect of acceptance and commitment based approach on rumination in women with a history of marital infidelity

Marital infidelity is one of the most destructive problems in a relationship and also one of the issues that usually leads to divorce. The aim of this study was the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on rumination in women with a history of marital infidelity.

The research method was quasi-experimental with pre-test-post-test design with control group. The statistical population of the study consisted of all betrayed women in Bojnourd who referred to the counseling center in 2021 to receive counseling services. Among them, 40 people were selected by available sampling method and randomly divided into two groups of experimental (20 people) and control (20 people). The research instrument was Nolen and Hoxma (1989) rumination questionnaire. Research data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance using SPSS-24 software.

The results showed that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of rumination. In other words, treatment based on acceptance and commitment significantly reduced the rumination of women with a history of marital infidelity (p<0.001).

Based on the results, it is recommended that clinical psychologists and therapists use acceptance and commitment therapy along with other educational methods to improve the health of betrayed women in providing psychological services.