The Role of Religious Beliefs in Predicting the Stability of Spouses' Relationships

A review of scientific reports during the last decade showsan increase in marital problems and an upward trend of divorceamong Iranian couples. This research was conducted with the aimof predicting the stability of spouses' relationships based onreligious beliefs.

The current research is descriptive-crosssectional and of the type of correlational studies. All the couples ofTehran city in 1401 constituted the statistical population of thisresearch, which were selected as a sample with the availablesampling method of 250 couples who were willing to cooperate.Allport's religious orientation questionnaire and Edwards et al.'smarital instability questionnaire were used to collect information. Inaddition to descriptive statistics, data analysis was performed withPearson's correlation coefficient test and regression with SPSSversion 26 statistical software.

The results indicated that there is a negative andsignificant relationship between the stability of spouses'relationships with external religious orientation (r=0.398 andP<0.023) and between the stability of spouses' relationships withinternal religious orientation. There is a positive and significant(r=0.613 and P<0.014). Also, the results of the regression analysisshowed that the total score of religious orientation couldsignificantly predict 28% of the variance of the stability of spouses'relationships. Also, two factors of religious orientation togethercould explain 21% of the variance of the stability of spouses'relationships.

It can be said that religious beliefs are related to thestability of spouses' relationships in married and family life, andtherapists and officials can take an effective step in strengtheningmarital and family relationships by including religious programs.