Investigating the effect of emotion-oriented couple counseling on marital stress and negative emotions of couples in Isfahan city

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of emotion-oriented couple counseling on marital stress and negative emotions of couples. The method of this research was quasi-experimental and of the pre-test-post-test type with a control group and a follow-up phase. To select the desired sample from the number of 110 couples, 40 couples (80 people) were selected as volunteers and randomly placed in two experimental and control groups (20 couples in the experimental group and 20 couples in the control group). To measure marital stress, Weiss et al.'s (1973) Change Areas Scale questionnaire was used, and to measure negative emotions, Watson et al.'s (1988) questionnaire was used. The independent variable was Johnson's emotion-oriented couple counseling (2004), which was applied to the experimental group in ten sessions, and during this period, no action was taken for the control group, The data were analyzed using repeated measure variance. The results showed that emotion-oriented couple counseling was effective on negative emotions (F=5.09, P <0.013) and marital stress (F=7.04, P <0.031) and this effect was stable in the follow-up phase (P=0.05). Therefore, it can be concluded that emotion-oriented couple counseling reduces marital stress and reduces negative emotions of referring couples.