Comparing the Effectiveness of Emotion-Focused Therapy and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy on The Sexual Satisfaction of Women Affected by Marital Infidelity

Background &

Marital bond is considered the most complex human relationship and has a potential ability to release emotions. At the same time, this very special human relationship may suffer due to the reasons that marital infidelity seems to damage the marital relationship more than any other problem and factor and puts the couple in a very difficult situation (1). Betrayal is one of the main reasons for divorce and marriage breakdown (2). In the couple therapy literature, cheating is any type of sexual or emotional relationship that is secret and outside of marital rules (3). Also, Widerman and Allgir (2011) in their definition of marital infidelity pay attention to a wider scope and consider it as having a sexual or emotional relationship, online or a combination of them (4). Of course, according to this definition, it is not necessary to have sex in order to be able to put a relationship in this category, but any relationship with a person of the opposite sex that is hidden from the spouse is an extramarital relationship and is considered treason (5).
One of the challenges that the betrayed person faces and in turn affects the quality of treatment is that marital betrayal causes the loss of trust in the relationship and the level of intimacy, as well as a sharp decrease in satisfaction with married life. . Therefore, until the betrayed person cannot forgive his wife and trust him, the recovery process will not be possible and there will be no overall satisfaction. Therefore, when working with such cases, therapists should not only focus on reducing symptoms and discomfort. Rather, they should pay attention to more important issues such as overall satisfaction with life, as well as quality of life and sexual satisfaction. It seems that overall satisfaction with life and sexual satisfaction have a two-way relationship with each other and the existence of each can help improve the other; Because the absence of one causes the decline of the other. On the other hand, the results of some studies show that sexual satisfaction increases mental health and improves the quality of life. Research findings about the quality and quantity of infidelity treatment show that regardless of the theoretical orientation of the treatment, a large percentage of couples can benefit from these interventions. Several theoretical and interventional models have been introduced for the treatment of infidelity, among which emotion-oriented therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy can be introduced. In this way, the current research was put to the test with the aim of comparing the effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy on the sexual satisfaction of women injured by marital infidelity.

The present study was applied in terms of purpose and semi-experimental in terms of execution method with a pre-test, post-test and follow-up plan with a control group. The statistical population of the research included all the women who referred to one of the counseling centers in Isfahan city due to their husband's infidelity in the first half of 2022. Thus, using the available sampling method, 54 people were selected from among them and randomly assigned to 2 experimental groups and 1 control group (18 people in each group). The research tool was the sexual satisfaction questionnaire (Larson et al., 1998), which was completed in three stages: pre-test, post-test and 3-month follow-up. Then, eight 90-minute sessions of emotion-focused therapy were given to the members of the experimental group (1) and eight 90-minute sessions of cognitive-behavioral therapy to the members of the experimental group (2). The obtained data were analyzed using variance analysis with repeated measurements and Bonferroni's post hoc test.

The results of the research showed that the average scores of sexual satisfaction in the pre-test, post-test and follow-up times were significantly different from each other (P<0.01); So that it was found that the average scores of sexual satisfaction in the post-test and follow-up stages increased significantly compared to the pre-test stage (P<0.01), but there was no significant difference between the average scores of the post-test and follow-up stages (0.01). <P). Therefore, it was concluded that the average scores of sexual satisfaction increased in the post-test and follow-up phase compared to the pre-test phase and this increase was stable. Also, the intergroup effects showed that there was a significant difference between the mean sexual satisfaction scores of the experimental and control groups and the impact factor was 0.501, which indicates that more than 50% of the changes in sexual satisfaction scores were due to the intervention. The pairwise comparison also indicated that the average sexual satisfaction scores of the test groups were significantly higher than the control group (P<0.01). In addition, the mean sexual satisfaction scores of the emotion-focused therapy group were significantly higher than the cognitive-behavioral therapy group (P<0.05).

It was concluded that although two intervention methods are effective in increasing the average scores of sexual satisfaction, the effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy was significantly higher. The results of the research showed that providing emotion-focused therapy had a lasting effect on improving women's sexual satisfaction. This finding is in line with the research results of Rostami et al (29), HasanneZhad et al (30), Halchuk et al (34).  In explaining these findings, it can be said that two methods of emotion-focused therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy have the necessary capacity and ability and were able to improve the sexual satisfaction of women participating in the research. Emotion-focused therapy improved the problematic emotional state of women due to the use of identification mechanisms, emotional readjustment and emotional readjustment. Cognitive-behavioral therapy also uses techniques such as increasing sexual awareness, sexual skills, imagining, increasing understanding and recognition of the causes of sexual problems and dissatisfaction, the way of expressing positive and negative sexual and non-sexual feelings, the field of improving women's sexual satisfaction. provided It seems that the presentation of these two treatment methods caused a change in the secretion of hormones such as oxytocin, estrogen and progesterone, which in turn increased the sexual satisfaction of women in test groups (1) and (2). However, the effectiveness of emotional therapy was higher compared to cognitive-behavioral therapy on improving sexual satisfaction, which can be explained by the fact that people who face marital infidelity, emotions experience negativity, conflict and ambiguity, which causes avoidance and non-adaptive behaviors in them. Therefore, emotional therapy focuses directly on negative emotions because it uses the bottom-up method, and compared to cognitive-behavioral therapy that uses the top-down method, it can solve such emotional problems faster and more deeply. solve and provide the necessary conditions to increase sexual satisfaction among women.