The Effectiveness of Affective–Reconstructive Couple Therapy on stress Symptoms and Trust in Women Affected by Infidelity

 Among all the problems that can occur in a marital relationship, infidelity is the most severe and most threatening to the stability of the relationship. The purpose of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of affective-reconstructive couple therapy (ARCT) on stress symptoms and trust in women affected by infidelity.

 The present semi-experimental research was conducted with a pretest-posttest design and follow-up. The statistical population of the study included all women referred to the counseling clinic of Eltiam and Mehrafza in Babolsar city, Iran, between 2020 to 2022 due to marital infidelity. The sample included 24 couples, which were selected through convenience sampling method and randomly divided into two groups, 12 couples in the experimental group (ARCT) and 12 couples of the control group. The Stress Symptoms Inventory (SSI) designed by Khodayarifar‎ (2001) and Trust Scale designed by Rempel, Holmes‎, and Zanna (1985) were used to collect data. The collected data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) in SPSS software.

 The obtained results showed that ARCT was effective in decreasing the stress symptoms (F = 140.00; P ≤ 0.05) of women affected by infidelity and improving trust in marital relationship (F = 237.59; P ≤ 0.05).

 According to the findings, it can be said that ARCT is effective in reducing emotional problems and improving stress symptoms of women affected by infidelity. Moreover, the research results showed that this couple therapy approach is effective in trust reconstruction in marital relationships.