The Effectiveness of Couple Therapy with Transactional Analysis Training on Disaffection and Marital Commitment in Couples

Increasing the level of marital disaffection and decreasing marital commitment is a serious threat to the survival of the marital relationship. Therefore, this study aimed to determine couple therapy's effectiveness with the transactional Analysis training to reduce marital disaffection and improve marital commitment in couples.

The study was quasi-experimental with the pretest-posttest design, and a follow-up test was conducted with a control group. The study population consisted of all couples who referred to counseling centers in the second half of 2019. To this end, 30 couples with marital problems and conflicts were selected by a purposive sampling method and randomly assigned to the experimental group (15 couples) and control group (15 couples). The data were collected using the Marital Disaffection Scale (MDS) and the Marital Commitment Questionnaire (MCQ). Couples in the experimental group participated in 10 sessions of 2 hours per week, but the control group did not receive these training. The data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance.

The findings indicated that there was significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of marital disaffection and marital commitment in the post-test stage (P <0.05). In other words, couple therapy by transactional Analysis training reduced marital disaffection and increased marital commitment and their dimensions in couples. This improvement was also maintained in the follow-up phase.

This study's results have practical implications for the use of therapeutic intervention programs in which the transactional Analysis training was employed to reduce marital problems caused by disaffection and marital commitment.