Schema Therapists Views about the Role of Schema Component in Marital Infidelity: a Qualitative Study

Marital infidelity is one of the most common and also destructive phenomena in marital relationship. Individual, relat-ionship, and contextual factors are seen as important predictor of infidelity. The aim of this study was to explore the role of early maladaptive schema in ma-rital infidelity. The data was gathered through 3 focused group of schema thera-pist and analyzed by Braun and Clarke method. Result present there overarching themes, trait schema component, state schema component and further schema. The first theme was about schemas and coping strategy. The analyses show the role of early maladaptive schema in disconnection and rejection, impaired limit and other directedness domains andovercompensation and surrender coping strategy. Vulnerable child mode, impu-lsive child mode, punitive parent mode and detached self-soother coping mode is seen in state related component. At last, individual and contextual factors are reported as further schema component. In sum, early maladaptive schemas as an individual factor can be seen as a predictor factor in marital infidelity.