The Effect of Object Relations Couple Therapy on the Emotional Expressiveness of Couples with Marital Conflict

Marital conflicts negatively affect couple relationships, and consequently, family relationships. Although several studies have been conducted on marital conflict, no study has examined the effect of object relations couple therapy on the emotional expressiveness of couples with marital conflict. So, this study was conducted to investigate the effect of object relations couple therapy on the emotional expressiveness and marital intimacy of couples with marital conflict.

This was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design, a control group, and a two-month follow-up. The statistical population included 192 couples who referred to Hekmat Va Saadat Counseling Centers in the first six months of 2019, from which 40 couples who received lower scores than the cut-off points of 40 were selected by the convenient sampling method after screening with King and Emmons (1990) Emotional Expressiveness Questionnaire and randomly assigned to the object relations couple therapy experimental group (10 couples) and the control group (10 couples). The experimental group received the Donovan (2013) object relations couple therapy intervention for eight 90-minute sessions, and the control group received no intervention. Data were analyzed using repeated-measures ANOVA.

The results showed that object relations couple therapy intervention had an effect on positive emotional expressiveness (P = 0.001, F = 114.76), intimacy emotional expressiveness (P = 0.001, F = 228.85), and negative emotional expressiveness (P = 0.001, F = 34.88) and that this effect was stable at the follow-up stage.

The results suggest evidence that object relations couple therapy intervention is a suitable method to increase positive emotional expressiveness and intimacy emotional expressiveness and reduce negative emotional expressiveness in couples with marital conflict.