Comparative Study of Marital Adaptation, Happiness and Divorce Inclination in Traditional and non Traditional Marriages

The purpose of the present study was to compare couples with traditional and non traditional marriages in Yazd city in terms of their marital adjustment, happiness, and desire to divorce. The research population consisted of all couples in Yazd city from which the research sample was drawn. This sample consisted of 240 subjects (including 130 cases of traditional and 110 cases of non-traditional marriages) who were selected through cluster random sampling. For the purposes of data collection, three sets of questionnaires including Locke-Wallas marital adjustment test, Oxford happiness questionnaire and the questionnaire developed by Zareii for desire to divorce were used.The present study followed a non-experimental vausal comparative(ex post facto) method. The obtained raw data were analyzed applying T tests. The findings showed that there were differences between the means of traditionally and non traditionally married couples in terms of happiness and marital adjustment (i.e. higher levels of happiness in non traditional marriages and higher levels of marital adjustment in traditional marriages), but these differences were not significant (P>.05). However, there were significantly higher levels of desire to divorce in non-traditionally married couples compared to their traditionally married counterparts (P<.05). Further, considering gender as the focused variable, there were not any significant differences between men and women who had traditional marriages in terms of happiness, marital adjustment and desire to divorce. In addition, men and women who had non traditional marriages were not significantly different in terms of happiness and desire to divorce (P>.05). Yet, those men and women who had nontraditional marriages were significantly different in terms of marital adjustment in the sense that men had higher levels of marital adjustment in comparison with women. These findings indicate the necessity of premarital education for families especially those with young people who are on the verge of marriage.