Comparison of the Effectiveness of Group Reality-based Couple Therapy and Forgiveness Therapy on Marital Adjustment, Emotional Differentiation and Intimacy of Couples with Emotional Divorce

Abstract

Aim: Emotional or silent divorce is the most dangerous type of divorce. The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of reality-based couple therapy and group forgiveness therapy on marital adjustment, emotional differentiation, and intimacy of divorced couples. Methods: The research design of this study was semi-experimental and the type of design was multi-group with pre-test and post-test. The statistical population was all married couples referred to Tabriz Andisheh Aramesh and Allameh Amini centers for counseling. Purposeful sampling was performed based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria (year of marriage, age, education and emotional divorce), thus, 42 patients (21 couples) were randomly divided into three reality therapy group (8 sessions), forgiveness therapy group (8 sessions), and control group. Multivariate analysis of covariance was used to analyze the results and repeated measures test was used to evaluate the scores at follow-up phase. Findings: Findings indicated that despite the favorable effect of both therapies, reality therapy had more significant effect on adaptation variable than therapeutic forgiveness. Also, none of the above treatments had a significant effect on the differentiation variable, and only the reality therapy had a significant effect on the intimate variable. Conclusion: Training the principles of reality therapy, informing the spouses about the severity of their needs and creating a sense of responsibility for the satisfaction of their needs can play an important role in establishing and improving intimate relationships and couple adjustment.