The effectiveness of marital relationship enrichment training on emotional literacy, couple compatibility, marital boredom and distress tolerance in couples

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of marital relationship enrichment training on emotional literacy, couple compatibility, marital burnout and distress tolerance in couples referring to Gonbad clinics.

The research method was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design and a control and follow-up group. The statistical population of this research is all the couples who referred to Gonbad city clinics in 2019-1400. Available sampling method was used to select the sample. The sample size was considered equal to 32 people, and the subjects were randomly divided into two experimental groups (16 people) and the control group (16 people). In this plan, Johnson's (1997) emotion-oriented couple therapy training was held in eight sessions for 90 minutes. The research tools were Emotional Literacy Questionnaire, Iranian Kimiai Family Psychological Functions Scale (2008), Spanier Marital Adjustment Scale (DAS) (1976), Pines Marital Discomfort Scale (1996) and Simmons and Gaher Distress Tolerance Questionnaire (2005). To analyze the results, repeated measure variance analysis was used.

The results showed the effectiveness of marital relationship enrichment training on emotional literacy (F=51.34, P=0.001), couples' compatibility (F=46.03, P=0.001), marital boredom (07/07) F=48, P=0.001) and distress tolerance F=032.86, P=0.001) were effective and this effect was stable in the follow-up phase.

Therefore, this intervention can be used as a part of therapeutic interventions effectively in marital adjustment and reducing boredom and increasing distress tolerance of conflicted couples.