The Effectiveness of Forgiveness-Based Couple Therapy and Religious Couple Therapy in Increasing the Compatibility and Quality of Marital Relationships in Bushehr

The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of forgiveness-based couple therapy and religious couple therapy in increasing the compatibility and quality of marital relationships in Bushehr.

This research is a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design with two experimental groups and a control group. The research instruments were the Spanier`s Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) (1976) and Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (RDAS) (1995). The statistical population of the study included 33 people who referred to counselling and psychological centers of Bushehr. From this population, 11 couples were randomly assigned in the first experimental group of religious couple therapy, 11 couples in the second experimental group of forgiveness therapy, and the other 11 couples in the control group. The couples in each method of the religious couple therapy and the couple therapy based on forgiveness participated in 8 sessions, 90-minute program.

The results of analysis of co-variance showed that religious couple therapy and couple therapy based on forgiveness led to improvement in adjustment and quality of martial relationship.

There is no significant difference in religious couple therapy compared to couple therapy based on forgiveness in case of improving adjustment but in the case of improving the quality of martial relationship, couple therapy based on forgiveness was more effective.