The moderating role of self-differentiation in the relationship between emotional abuse and attachment style with marital satisfaction of couples

Identity Marital satisfaction, as one of the important and determining indicators in the strength of the family, is a situation in which the husband and wife feel happy, satisfied with marriage and satisfied with each other most of the time. The purpose of this research is to investigate the moderating role of self-differentiation in the relationship. There was a correlation between emotional abuse and attachment with marital satisfaction of couples in Bandar Abbas city. The research method was descriptive-correlation and structural equation modeling. The statistical population included all the couples of Bandar Abbas city in 2022-2023, out of which 240 people were selected by available sampling method. Data collection tools include self-differentiation questionnaire, Skorn and Friedlander (2003), childhood trauma, Mohammadkhani et al. (2003), adult attachment scale, Collins and Reed (1990) and Olson's marital satisfaction scale (1994) were used. And data analysis was done using hierarchical regression method and SPSS software version 24. The findings showed that self-differentiation can moderate the effect of emotional misbehavior and infatuation style dimensions on marital satisfaction at the level of p < 0.01 with regression coefficients of 0.1424 and -0.370, respectively. Based on the findings of this research, it can be concluded that self-differentiation affects the intensity of the effects of emotional abuse and attachment on marital satisfaction.