Predicting Couple's Marital Satisfaction Based on Relationship Beliefs and Relationship Skills

This Study, according to cognitive-behavior approach, tries to investigate the role of relationship beliefs and relationship skills in couple's marital satisfaction. To do so, 160 persons (80 couples) from Tabriz were selected. After establishing the motivation for participation in the research and getting their informed consent, they were asked to fill out Relationship Beliefs Questionnaire (RBQ), Mor-adi's marital relationship skills questi-onnaire and marital satisfaction questi-onnaire (ENRICH). The results showed that there was significant difference between husban-ds’ and their wive's marital satis-faction. Stepwise regression analyses revealed that relational skills and marriage duration were, respectively, significant predictors of husbands’ marital satisfaction. Also, relational skills and some of relational beliefs- such as "things should always be perfect between us", "we should do everything together" and "romantic-cism", had significant contribution in prediction of wives’ martial satisfa-ction, respectively. Contributions of other relational beliefs were not significant. These results clarified the role of relational shills and relational beliefs in marital satisfaction, and confirmed that cognitive-behavior approaches, through training relational skills for couples, and therapeutic interventions to change wive's irrat-ional beliefs would be effective in treating marital problems.