Comparing the Effectiveness of Individual and Pair Counseling on the Tendency toward Divorce for Couples with Extramarital Relationships

Aim and Given the complex nature of cheating and its catastrophic impact on tendency toward divorce, it is imperative to adopt effective interventions to help those couples who are facing this problem. This study aimed to compare effectiveness of the counseling programs based on tendency toward divorce among couples involved in extramarital relationships.
Methods and Materials: Present study is a quasi-experimental study. The subjects were selected from clients referring to the counseling centers in Isfahan, Iran, through convenience sampling method. The participants were non-randomly divided into four groups including couple counseling (8 couples), husbands’ individual counseling
(16 men being cheated on and their spouses), wives’ individual counseling (16 cheating women and their spouses), and the control group (n = 16). Three experimental groups were treated in ten 80-minute sessions. Divorce tendency questionnaire was used to assess intervention effectiveness and to compare the surveyed groups. Various studies have reported the acceptable reliability and validity of this instrument.
Findings: The data of all participants (96 individuals including the couples in all groups) were analyzed. The repeated measures test was used to evaluate the main and interactive effects of the time and surveyed groups regarding divorce and its components. The effect of group interaction (individual counseling group, couple counseling group and control group) and time (three stages: pre-test, post-test and follow-up) were significant in all surveyed variables (P Counseling programs based on couple counseling, compared with individual counseling methods, had higher effectiveness regarding tendency toward divorce among couples involved in extramarital relations.