Relationship between Marital Satisfaction and Attachment Style: The Mediating Role of Mentalization and Boredom

Couple satisfaction is a major and complicated aspect of marital life inside a family. Various factors are involved in it and affect it. The goal of the present study was to investigate the mediating role of boredom and mentalization in the relationship between attachment and marital satisfaction of women and men in the city of Bandar Abbas.
The study method falls under descriptive and correlative research. The statistical population of the study consisted of all married people in the city of Bandar Abbas in 2021-2022, out of whom 350 people were selected via the convenience sampling method. To gather data, Pines’ Marital Boredom Scale (1996), Fonagy’s Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (2016), Attachment Questionnaire, and Olson’s Marital Satisfaction Scale (1994). To evaluate the hypothetical model and indirect effects, the maximum likelihood estimation and Bootstrap test were used. To analyze data, SPSS (version 23) and LISREL (Version 8.8) Software were used.
Secure and avoidant attachment styles with the standard coefficients of -0.37 and -0.24 were found to affect mentalization and marital boredom; mentalization and marital boredom with the standard coefficients of -0.17 and -0.14 affected marital satisfaction. In addition, secure and insecure attachment styles with the standard coefficients of 0.20 and -0.47 affected marital satisfaction (all effects were significant at p˂0.001).
According to the findings of the present study, it can be stated that couples’ attachment (secure or avoidant) styles and other variables affecting attachment, i.e., mentalization and boredom can affect couples’ marital satisfaction.