Comparing the Effects of Forgiveness and Self-Compassion Training on Marital Conflicts in Females Facing Marital Infidelity

Infidelity is among the most destructive abuses experienced in a relationship, defined as "having sexual relationships with someone other than a regular spouse or sexual partner." Studies suggested that marital infidelity is the main cause of marital dissatisfaction and conflicts as well as disputes in couples. The constant conflicts between couples increase the psychological pressure imposed on both parties. Forgiveness is a psychological construct and therapeutic approach to communication problems and marital conflicts of spouses. In addition to forgiveness–based therapy, compassion–based cognitive therapy is a method to help individuals further develop an intimate relationship with themselves. Couple therapists consider marital infidelity as the most difficult problem to treat concerning marital problems. Thus, comparing different approaches can be effective in developing an integrated intervention in this respect. Therefore, this study aimed to compare the effects of forgiveness and self–compassion training on reducing conflicts between women who encountered marital infidelity.

This was a quasi–experimental study with pretest–posttest–follow–up and a control group design. The research population consisted of women who encountered marital infidelity referring to counseling and assistance centers in Birjand City, Iran, in 2018. The study sample consisted of 52 individuals who were divided into two experimental groups of forgiveness training (n=16) and self–compassion training (n=18) and a control group (n=18) and selected by purposive sampling method. The inclusion criteria of the study were as follows: being married; having experienced marital infidelity during the last two years, and no receipt of previous psychological interventions. The exclusion criteria of the research were unwillingness to continue cooperation with the study, and the existence of obvious mental health disorders (these criteria were screened through the participantschr('39') self–declaration). The study participants completed the Marriage Conflict Scale (Eggeman et al., 1985) before and after the intervention and three months later. The research intervention was performed using the forgiveness training package and self–compassion training package. Forgiveness training was developed by Park (2003) based on the 4 steps of the enlightenment forgiveness process model, including anger expression, resentment, decision making, and anger relief, i.e., performed in twelve 60–minute sessions. Self–Compassion Training was designed by Gilbert (2005) in twelve 90–minute sessions that teach empathy, compassion, acceptance and tolerance, responsibility, and a sense of worth. The obtained data were analyzed using SPSS and repeated–measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at the significance level of p<0.05.

Investigating the interactive effect of independent variables revealed that marital conflict scores have changed over time from pre–intervention to follow–up. Besides, there was a significant difference between the three groups of forgiveness, compassion, and control in this respect (p<0.001). The significance of the effect of the independent variable (group) highlights that the group variable presented a significant effect on the mean values of marital conflict; the mean scores of marital conflict significantly varied between the three research groups (p<0.001). The Bonferroni posthoc test data suggested a significant difference in the scores of marital conflict between the two groups of compassion and forgiveness (p=0.006), as well as between the compassion and control groups (p<0.001); however, there was no significant difference between the forgiveness and control groups in this regard (p=1.000).

The present research data indicated that the effectiveness of self–compassion training was higher than that of the self–forgiveness training on marital conflicts. Therefore, using self–compassion as a useful and effective intervention can be profitable in reducing the marital conflicts of women experiencing marital infidelity.