Marital Disaffection Research Articles

The Role of Life Satisfaction and Sexual Self-Consciousness in Marital Disaffection

In this research, it was aimed to investigate life satisfaction and sexual self-consciousness as the predictors of marital disaffection and to reveal whether marital disaffection differs significantly according to determined demographical variables. The research was conducted with the data obtained from 435 (239 females and 196 males) married individuals living in various cities in Turkey. The findings obtained in the research suggested that life satisfaction and sexual self-consciousness significantly predicted marital disaffection and the present two predictive variables of the research together explain 28% of the total variance in the scores of marital disaffection. It was also concluded that life satisfaction was negatively and moderately related to marital disaffection, and that there was a low related positive relationship between sexual self-consciousness and marital disaffection and it was found that marital disaffection it differed significantly according to gender, type of marriage, duration of marriage and the number of children.

Correction: The Effect of Solution Focused Level on Marital Disaffection and Sexual Satisfaction in Married Individuals

Correction: The Effect of Solution Focused Level on Marital Disaffection and Sexual Satisfaction in Married Individuals

Determinants of health-promoting behaviors in pregnant women.

The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between social support, marital dissatisfaction, psychological factors, and health-promoting behaviors in pregnant women. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 1,265 pregnant women who visited the outpatient clinic of a maternity hospital between May and August 2023. The Health Promotion Lifestyle-II Questionnaire was used to measure the healthy lifestyle behaviors of pregnant women. The mental health status of pregnant women was measured using the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21. The Marital Disaffection Scale was used to assess the level of disaffection toward a spouse. Perceived social support was measured by the Multidimensional Perceived Social Support Scale. Pregnant women had a mean age of 26.46±5.09 years. Multivariate linear regression analysis revealed that there was a positive association between perceived social support and health-promoting behaviors. It was also found that marital disaffection was negatively associated with health-promoting behaviors (p<0.001). The present study suggests that stress, anxiety, depression, and marital disaffection are negatively associated with health-promoting lifestyle behaviors, while social support is positively associated with the adoption of health practices in pregnant women. Understanding the complex interplay between psychosocial factors and healthy behaviors is crucial to improving healthy behaviors in pregnant women.

Association between perceived social support, marital satisfaction, differentiation of self and perinatal depression.

The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between peripartum depression and social support, marital satisfaction, and self-differentiation. This cross-sectional study was conducted on postpartum women from December 28, 2021, and March 31, 2022. Postpartum women were evaluated using a questionnaire consisting of sections assessing sociodemographic characteristics, obstetric history, and psychometric instruments: Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale (EPDS), Marital Disaffection Scale (MDS), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), and Differentiation of Self Inventory (DSI). A total of 425 mothers were included in the study. Of those, 140 (32.9%) mothers scored ≥13 points on EPDS, and 285 (67.1%) mothers scored ≤12 points. Mothers who scored ≥13 on the EPDS were found to have significantly higher scores for marital dissatisfaction. Total scores of family support, friend support, emotional cutoff, fusion with others, and differentiation of self were higher in mothers who scored ≤12 points on the EPDS. There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of significance with others, emotional reactivity and I position. This study found that marital satisfaction is important in the development of perinatal depression both directly and through family support and emotional cuttoff. In addition, mothers with family support, friend support, and self-differentiation had comparatively lower EPDS scores, while mothers with marital dissatisfaction had higher EPDS scores.

The Effect of Solution Focused Level on Marital Disaffection and Sexual Satisfaction in Married Individuals

The Effect of Solution Focused Level on Marital Disaffection and Sexual Satisfaction in Married Individuals

The Effectiveness of a Unified Protocol for the Family Therapy on Emotional Divorce and Marital Boredom in Women with Marital Conflict

Objective: Marital conflicts are normal in a couple’s life, and the important thing is how they resolve such conflicts. This integrated therapy plan has been created by considering several theories to reduce couples’ marital conflicts. We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a unified protocol based on the McMaster model of the family, compassion-focused therapy, and mindfulness-based therapy on emotional divorce and marital boredom of women with marital conflict. Methods: The present study used a quasi-experimental method with a pre-test, post-test design and a control group. The research population included all women with marital conflicts referred to four selected counseling centers in District 2 of Tehran Municipality, Iran, in 2019. A total of 100 women were selected by a convenient sampling method. Then, they filled out the emotional divorce scale and the marital disaffection scale. They were then randomly assigned to the intervention and control groups (each group with 15 participants). The participants in the intervention group underwent the intervention within a 12-session training package. After the 3 months, the follow-up test was taken. Upon the completion of the intervention, the participants in both groups completed the questionnaires. The collected data were analyzed using multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) by SPSS V. 24 software. Results: The results indicated a significant difference between the intervention and control groups in terms of emotional divorce (P=0.001, F=57.67) and marital boredom (P=0.001, F=26.80) in the post-test phase. Besides, after 3 months, using Bonferroni post hoc test, it was found that the difference in scores in both post-test and follow-up stages was significant (P=0.005) Conclusion: The transdiagnostic treatment can decrease emotional divorce and marital boredom of women with marital conflict. This unified model can be applied by family and marriage counselors and other mental health professionals to resolve conflicts between couples.

Improving Measurement in Couple and Family Therapy: An Item Response Theory Primer

The valid and reliable assessment of individual and relational functioning relies on high-quality assessment tools. Most assessments used in the field of couple and family therapy were developed using Classical Test Theory (CTT). An alternate theory for guiding the creation, evaluation, and scoring of assessments is Item Response Theory (IRT). IRT has several advantages over CTT and can be used to improve measurement in the field. For example, the IRT approach creates measures that are significantly more precise, yet uses fewer items, than scales created using CTT. This manuscript provides an overview of how IRT differs from CTT and describes the fundamental concepts and assumptions of IRT. Following this summary, we provide a step-by-step example of how IRT can be used to reduce the length of the Marital Disaffection Scale from 21 to 6 items without losing a significant amount of information about the construct.

Effect of Abstinence Time on Semen Parameters among Male Patients Referring to Urology Clinic

Introduction: Premature ejaculation (PE) is one of the most common disorders in sexual intercourses among men and may occur for any man in any period of his life. PE results in some mental disorders such as anxiety, depression and marital disaffection and can have psychological impacts. The present study is aimed to investigate the effect of the abstinence time on the semen analysis parameters among men.&#x0D; Methods: The present cross-sectional study was conducted on a statistical population including 100 male patients referring to the urology clinic in Ali-Ibn-Abitaleb Hospital. Once included in the study, these individuals are divided into three groups with short-term abstinence (less than 2 days), mid-term abstinence (2-9 days), and long-term abstinence (more than 9 days). The patients, depending on the group to which they belonged, were asked to deliver their semen at the specified time to the laboratory in less than an hour. The obtained data were statistically analyzed in SPSS-22 software.&#x0D; Findings: The results of Pearson correlation and Spearman tests indicated a direct positive relationship between the abstinence time and the total number of sperms in the seminal fluid, concentration of the sperms in the seminal fluid, volume of the seminal fluid, sperm DNA fragmentation, reactive oxygen species in the seminal fluid, and pH of the seminal fluid.accordingly, the longer the abstinence time, the more the occurrence of these disorders. Also, the correlation test results showed that the abstinence time had an inverse relationship with motility and morphology of the sperms in the seminal fluid; accordingly, with elongation of the abstinence time, the motility (mobility) and morphology of the sperms in the seminal fluid were reduced.&#x0D; Conclusion: The researchers in the present work concluded the presence of a relationship between the abstinence time and the quality of the sperm parameters. Results of the present study showed that the abstinence time is significantly associated with the total sperm count, sperm concentration seminal fluid volume and pH.

The Protective Influence of Relationship Commitment on the Effects of Facebook Addiction on Marital Disaffection

Previous research has suggested that Facebook use can lead to adverse romantic relationship outcomes due to interpersonal conflicts, interactions with potential romantic alternatives, and jealousy. However, these associations have been explored mainly with undergraduates, focusing primarily on conflict rather than emotional disengagement. The current study examined the associations between Facebook addiction and marital disaffection (e.g., loss of love, emotional disengagement) amongst 138 (95 females and 43 males) cohabiting married Facebook users residing in the United States. The results revealed that Facebook addiction and marital disaffection were positively related, even after controlling for relationship commitment. Additionally, greater relationship commitment weakened the association between Facebook addiction and marital disaffection. There are likely multiple explanations for the current findings; however, results suggest that higher levels of relationship commitment may protect spouses against the negative relationship outcomes associated with Facebook addiction. Future longitudinal work with couples is needed to clarify the directionality of the relationship between Facebook addiction and marital disaffection.

Predicting Marital Disaffection based on Marital Conflict and Attachment Styles

Predicting Marital Disaffection based on Marital Conflict and Attachment Styles

Outliving love: marital estrangement in an African insurance market

Marital estrangement and formal divorce are vital conjunctures for married women’s kinship relations and life course, where a horizon of future possibilities are revalued and negotiated at the interstices of custom, law, and social and ritual obligations. In this article, after delineating the forms of customary and civil marriage and the possibilities for divorce or estrangement from each, I describe how some married women in Swaziland and South Africa mediate this complex social field for their children and families through pensions and continuing to pay for their partners’ insurance coverage. This was not solely out of avarice to reap future benefits as spouses. Rather, in a context of patriarchal relations, gender-based violence and economic dispossession, women seek to maintain potential financial grounds through insurance resources, acknowledge their children’s paternity, and fulfil enduring obligations to in-laws by partially contributing to the eventual funerals of their spouses and kin.

Polarized Couples in Therapy: Recognizing Indifference as the Opposite of Love

How can a couple “fall in love” and then subsequently “stumble out of love”? For centuries, this question has perplexed partners, researchers, and therapists alike. Unlike falling out of love, which may be a long-term gradual decline in love, falling in love may occur without much deliberation like the famous “love at first sight.” During a developing love relationship, couples are more susceptible to ignoring a myriad of factors that will eventually influence their relationship. These ignored personal and general factors become increasingly conspicuous after the relationship is established. When facing relationship difficulties, the presence or absence of mutual love and intimacy steers the couple's relationship toward continuity or termination. Emotional indifference (which is the opposite of love) diminishes love and care; the terms marital disaffection and romantic disengagement are used synonymously to represent emotional indifference in couples. Marital disaffection is one of the central concerns of couples entering therapy. Nevertheless, spouses may enter therapy with divergent goals that may be polar opposites. Therefore, treatment of polarized or different agenda couples is challenging because disaffected spouses may be seeking counseling to break the bond at a safe venue, while their partners may still be obliviously hoping for the rebirth of their lost love. This article reviews marital disaffection/romantic disengagement and discusses counseling options for polarized couples.

Negotiating therapeutic alliances with a family at impasse.

To bridge the science-practice gap, the APA Presidential Task Force endorsed the publication of evidence-based case studies, but to date, there have been few such investigations of conjoint family therapy. To fill this gap, we studied a successful case of treatment-as-usual in a community agency. Owing to the complexity of the working alliance in conjoint therapy, we examined how an experienced family therapist managed to develop and sustain multiple alliances over time with an estranged couple in crisis. The outcome data showed clinically meaningful changes as well as high satisfaction levels and notable declines in the target complaint discomfort levels of all family members. Alliance indicators showed that the therapist worked diligently over time to connect emotionally with each family member and to foster and maintain safety. Session impact scores showed consistently deep sessions but more variability in smoothness. By working toward the only shared treatment goal-to repair each parent's individual relationship with their very angry daughter-the therapist was able to reduce the effect of the marital estrangement on the child. At the end of the 10 contracted family sessions, the parents agreed to begin working on their relationship in couples therapy, which led shortly thereafter to a reconciliation.

Workaholism and marital estrangement: A rational-choice perspective

Workaholism is an addiction to work. It is a major source of marital estrangement and breakdown as well as a severe threat to physical and psychological health. While addiction to harmful goods has gained considerable attention in the economic literature, addiction to work, with one recent exception, has totally escaped economists’ notice, despite the growing concern with its devastating consequences. The present paper makes a second step in applying economic reasoning to this problem, developing a dynamic model of rational workaholism. The model demonstrates that it is not necessary for work to be addictive per se in order to exhibit an addictive pattern throughout which work intensity monotonically increases with time. Marital estrangement alone may inflame the desire for work, which in turn further exacerbates estrangement. The model determines the optimal intensity of work and quality of marriage for the workaholic over time, showing that even a happily married, forward-looking individual might be swept into an addictive course of excessive work that leads to marital breakdown.

Understanding and Treating Marital Infidelity: A Multidimensional Model

Marital infidelity is a multifaceted problem that frequently causes couples to enter marital therapy. In this article, seven broad categories of extramarital relationships are reviewed. Certain personality factors are identified that must be taken into consideration when evaluating whether the problematic behavior is symptomatic of an axis II personality disorder, reflects less severe characterological weaknesses, or is due to other considerations. Marital dynamics, especially how spouses perceive the voluntary/non-voluntary nature of their marriage, is shown to be another important factor in determining the course, goals and outcome of therapy when infidelity is the presenting problem. An additional group of factors, e.g., marital disaffection, trust, desire to improve the marriage, willingness to reconcile, and the capacity to give and receive forgiveness is also important to take into account when gauging a couples' motivation for treatment.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity of the Marital Disillusionment Scale

The Marital Disillusionment Scale, together with measures of divorce proneness, marital disaffection, work addiction, sensation seeking, intimacy, and marital satisfaction (using the subscales Marital Disharmony and Disaffection), was administered to 116 married people (42 men, 74 women) in a university town in the western USA. Scores on the Marital Disillusionment Scale had significant positive correlations with scores on the Marital Instability Scale (r = .54), the Marital Disaffection Scale (r = .72), and the two subscales Disharmony (r = .53) and Disaffection (r = .75) of the eMarital Satisfaction Inventory. Scores for the Marital Disillusionment Scale were negatively correlated with those for the Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships Inventory (r = -.65) but were not significantly associated with scores for the Work Addiction Risk Test and the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale. The results support the convergent and discriminant validity of the Marital Disillusionment Scale.

The Relationship Between Workaholism and Marital Disaffection: Husbands' Perspective

Previous research suggests that wives of workaholics experience greater marital estrangement and less positive feelings than do wives of nonworkaholics. This study examined husbands' perception of marital disaffection and the relationship to their wives' workaholic tendencies. A random sample of 272 male members of the American Counseling Association were mailed a survey that examined their spouses' workaholic behavior, marital disaffection, locus of control, and positive and negative affects. The results suggest that workaholism is positively related to martial disaffection ( p &lt; .01). The most important workaholism domains for predicting martial disaffection were overcontrolling behavior ( r = .36) and impaired communication ( r = .38). The results underscore the need for greater clinical awareness of marital problems associated with workaholic tendency.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, a biography: youth's unextinguished fire, 1792-1816

This biography, incorporating recent research and scholarship, stresses the intimate relationship between Shelley's life (1792-1822) and his poetry. Unusual aristocratic family influences, a unique and precocious childhood, traumatic educational events, and parental rejection molded the concurrent development of his radical sociopolitical beliefs and his poetic identity. Political activism (Ireland and Wales) prefigured the disastrous dissolution of Shelley's first marriage, replaced by involvement with William Godwin and elopement with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. After losing legal custody of his two children by his first wife because of his radical writing and behavior, increasing social ostracism, health concerns, and critical attacks on his poetry led to exile in Italy. Here, before his untimely death, he composed his greatest lyrics and most profound poetry amid personal anguish involving the deaths of his and Mary's children, Keats's death, romantic intrigues, marital disaffection, disillusionment with Byron, and political turbulence at home and abroad. Illustrated, Now retired, Dr. Bieri taught at the University of Texas at Austin.

Marital Estrangement, Positive Feelings Toward Partners, and Locus of Control: Female Counselors Married to Alcohol‐Abusing and Non‐Alcohol‐Abusing Spouses

Marital estrangement, positive feelings toward spouses, and locus of control among a national sample of 323 female counselors who were either married or formerly married to alcohol‐abusing or to non‐alcohol‐abusing male partners were examined. Statistically significant differences between groups were found.

Marital Estrangement, Positive Affect, and Locus of Control Among Spouses of Workaholics and Spouses of Nonworkaholics: A National Study

This study compared a sample of spouses of workaholics and spouses of nonworkaholics on ratings of marital estrangement, positive feelings toward husband, and locus of control. A random national sample of 326 participants drawn from the membership list of the American Counseling Association was surveyed. Spouses of workaholics reported greater marital estrangement and less positive affect towards husbands and higher external locus of control than spouses of nonworkaholics. These findings were the first empirical results to corroborate clinical and case study reports. Clinical implications of these findings are also presented.