The Effectiveness of Emotionally-Focused Couple Therapy on Marital Adaptability and Happiness of Couples

All human beings have a basic need for intimate relationships. To achieve this need and develop intimacy, marriage provides a unique and appropriate opportunity for human beings. One of the important aspects in marriage is marital satisfaction and marital compatibility. Marital adaptability is a process that occurs throughout life and refers to the characteristics of a harmonious marital relationship and having a good performance in marriage. The other important aspect is happiness. Happiness is an emotion that everyone wants and strives to achieve. The level of marital happiness implicitly indicates low levels of conflict and has positive effect on behavioral (such as adjustment) and communication (such as a desire to remarry your current spouse if possible to return to the early days) features. While marital relationship can be a source of many pleasurable experiences, it can also bring the most painful consequences. Researches has shown that two of the variables with which couples can have negative conflicts are marital adaptability and happiness. The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Emotionally-focused couple therapy training on marital adaptability and couple happiness. This research was a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest method with control and experimental groups.

The sample size consisted of 60 people (30 couples) who were selected by available sampling method from counseling centers in Ahvaz in the year 1400 and were assigned to two experimental and control groups by simple random sampling. The statistical criterion for entering the subjects of this study were couples who had a kind of marital adaptability problems and lack of happiness in their lives. First, the couples answered the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire developed by Michael Argyle and Peter Hills and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) 1976 by Graham B. Spanier, then the experimental group was trained in an approach-based emotion management (EFT) strategy for 8 sessions. At the end of 8 sessions of therapeutic intervention, post-test was performed and the necessary results were collected using SPSS 24 and processed. Then, in order to observe justice in the research, the control group underwent 8 sessions of treatment as the experimental group.

Based on the comparison of pre-test and post-test between the two groups, the results showed that teaching emotion management strategies based on Emotionally-focused couple therapy (EFT) approach has a significant effect (p≤0.05) on increasing marital adaptability and couple happiness. Levene homogeneity test, Regression slope test (T), Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk test, Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) and ANKOA confirmed the validity and reliability of the data and analysis.

The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of Emotionally-focused couple therapy on marital adaptability and happiness of couples. The results showed that Emotionally-focused training is effective in increasing marital adaptability of couples. These results are consistent with the results of studies by Soltani et al. (2012), Zia-ul-Haq et al. (2012), Najafi et al. (2014) and Ramezanzadeh et al. (2010). One of the reasons that Emotionally-focused couple therapy is effective on couple's marital adaptability is that compared to other therapies, in Emotionally-focused couple therapy, targeting both couples simultaneously in psychological intervention can be very useful. Emotionally-focused couple therapy will improve couples interactions by solving their emotional problems, identifying unexpressed and repressed emotions, and identifying their spouse's emotional and emotional needs, thus increasing the couple's expression of love and marital adaptability. Emotional couple therapy, based on the correct and appropriate release of emotions, stabilizing the couple's attachment style and reducing the couple's emotional, feelings and anxiety problems, and also increases their physical health. In Emotionally-focused couple therapy, people learn to understand their spouse's feelings and emotions, to talk about their own positive and negative feelings and emotions, and to be a good listener to their spouse. Correcting these seemingly simple things is a very important step in the mutual understanding of couples and improving the marital compatibility of couples. In the family, marital relationship can be a source of joy or a great source of suffering. Hence, one of the components of the quality of marital relations is marital happiness, which shows the general level of happiness of the individual from different dimensions of the marital relationship. The level of marital happiness implicitly indicates low levels of conflict and has behavioral (such as adaptability) and communication characteristics (such as the desire to remarry the current spouse if possible and return to the early days). Happiness is contagious, meaning that one person's happiness can bring happiness to others. Another is that it expands one's dependence on the environment and makes life more enjoyable. There is evidence to support this view, showing that people are happier in a successful marriage. A marriage in which people speak respectfully and frankly, in a safe environment expressing their emotions and forgiving each other's mistakes is usually accompanied by higher levels of satisfaction. So, this communication is more likely to lead to happiness. Therefore, recognizing and managing emotions can be effective in increasing the happiness of the experimental group after the test. Emotionally-focused couple therapy approach can change the couple's attachment styles and also change the cycle of defective marital interactions and create a safe communication environment, emotion planning and control the couple's behavior and increase marital satisfaction and consequently happiness. Also, negative emotions lead to a decrease in spouse's satisfaction with each other and positive emotions will increase spouse's satisfaction and peace with trust and ultimately cause their happiness. Based on the results of the present study, Emotionally-focused couple therapy can improve couple's adaptability and increase happiness in their lives. Therefore, this type of intervention is recommended to increase adaptation and happiness in couples.