The role of alexithymia, cognitive flexibility and fear of intimacy in predicting marital conflict in nurses

Marital conflict affects the mental, physical and family health of nurses. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the role of alexithymia, cognitive flexibility and fear of intimacy in predicting marital conflict in nurses

The present study is descriptive-correlational. The statistical population of the present study was all nurses working in the hospitals of Karaj city in 2021, which were selected by the Convenience sampling method from shahidrajaee, Imam ali and Takhtjamshid hospitals 240 people. The Psychological Flexibility Inventory (CFI), the Toronto Emotional Dysfunction Scale (TAS) and the Intimacy Fear Scale (FIS) were used to collect data. The collected data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient and multivariate regression analysis in SPSS-24 software.

The results showed that there is a negative and significant relationship between problem solving processing (r = 0.732 and P = 0.001) and control perception (r = -0.616 and P = 0.001) with marital conflict. Between difficulty in identifying emotions (r = 0.593 and P = 0.001), difficulty in describing emotions (r = 0.724 and P = 0.001), objective thinking (r = 0.441 and P = 0.001) and fear of intimacy (r = 0.544 and P = 0.001) have a positive and significant relationship with marital conflict. Also, the results of multiple regression analysis revealed that 68.7% of the variance of marital conflict is explained by alexithymia, cognitive flexibility and fear of intimacy.

According to the results, to reduce nurses' marital conflict, programs can be designed to increase their cognitive flexibility and reduce alexithymia and fear of their intimacy, and implemented through online or offline workshops.