Effectiveness of Emotion-Focused Couple Therapy in Insecure Attachment Styles

Marital infidelity is a traumatic interpersonal accident that can lead to cognitive, emotional, and behavioral symptoms in the victim. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of couples' relationship enrichment training with the EFT emotion-focused approach on insecure attachment styles in women and men faced with spousal infidelity. The method of the study was a semi-experimental pre-test, post-test, follow-up with the control group. The statistical population of this study was all men and women who were referred to counseling centers in Tehran in 2019-2020 due to spouses' infidelity. By convenience sampling method, 40 people were selected and randomly divided into an experimental and control group. The Control group did not receive the intervention. Data were collected based on an attachment styles questionnaire (Hazen & Shaver, 1987), and a multivariate covariance analysis test was used to eliminate the effect of pre-test using SPSS software. The results showed that emotion-focused training affected the scores of insecure attachment styles (P<0.01). The results also showed that the method of training was to enrich couples' relationships with an emotion-focused approach in the follow-up phase (P<0.01). Therefore, based on the findings of this study, it can be said that the method of training couples' relationship enrichment focused on the emotion-focused approach is an effective model in women and men affected by spousal infidelity and can be used as one of the therapeutic or educational methods in couple therapy programs.