MARITAL DISSATISFACTION AMONG NEWLY MARRIED TEACHERS

Abstract

Marital dissatisfaction is the most important issue in marital life which has the highest effect on the stability and failure of couples’ lives. Therefore, this study explored the efficacy of Emotionally Focused Therapy and religiosity on marital dissatisfaction among newly married teachers in Ibadan, Oyo State. Pretest-posttest, control group quasi-experimental design with a 2x2 factorial matrix was used in the study. Simple random sampling technique was used in sampling 80 participants from 4 local government areas in the state. The respondents were measured with validated marital dissatisfaction scale with a reliability coefficient of .87 and the data obtained was analysed using t-test statistical analysis. The result showed that there was a significant difference in marital dissatisfaction among newly married teachers exposed to emotionally focused therapy and those in the control group and newly married teachers with high religiosity and those with low religiosity. In view of these findings, the study recommended that counselling psychologists should intensify their effort to organize conferences on the implications of emotionally focused therapy and religiosity as effective interventions towards reducing marital dissatisfaction.