Comparison of the Effectiveness of the Successful Money Management and Reality Therapy Training Packages in Financial Conflicts, Family Relationships, and Marital Intimacy of Married Women

Economic pressure in families where couples cannot match their financial demands with the current family conditions can create conflicts in the financial priorities of each couple or family. These conflicts, which are caused by financial turmoil, can reduce family communication, marital satisfaction, and intimacy. Accordingly, this study was conducted to determine and compare the effectiveness of the successful management and reality therapy training packages in financial conflicts, family relationships, and marital intimacy of married women.

This was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest and posttest design, a control group, and a two-month follow-up phase. The statistical population included all married women in Tehran in 2020-2021, out of which 45 married women were selected by purposeful sampling and randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group (15 woman). The experimental groups received eight 90-minute sessions of researcher-made successful money management training (2021) and Glasser's reality therapy (2008) interventions one session per week. However, the control group received no intervention. The study tools were the ENRICH marital satisfaction scale (1998), the Family Communication Patterns Instrument (Ritchie & Fitzpatrick, 1990), and the Intimacy Scale (IS) (Thompson & Walker, 1983). The data were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA.

According to the results, successful money management and reality therapy training packages have a significant effect on financial conflict, family relationships, and marital intimacy of married women (p<0.001). The results of the follow-up test suggested that there is no significant difference between the two test groups in terms of the effectiveness of the training packages. So, it can be argued that both training packages are equally effective.

The results indicated that both the successful money management training package, which is a culture-based and native protocol, and the reality therapy training package can reduce financial conflicts in the family and improve family relationships and marital intimacy.