Comparing the effectiveness of schema therapy and emotional therapy on the quality of marital relationships in women affected by infidelity

The present study aimed to compare the effectiveness of schema therapy and emotional therapy on the quality of marital relationships in women affected by infidelity. The method of the present study was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design and a control group with a three-year follow-up period. The statistical population of the present study consisted of all women affected by the infidelity of their husbands who were referred to psychological clinics in the 1st district of Tehran in the first half of 2023. 45 people were selected purposefully and randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group. The instrument of this research was Busby et al's Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (RDAS, 1995). The emotion-based intervention of Johnson's educational package (2004) and Young et al.'s schema-based protocol (2003) were implemented in 9 sessions of 120 minutes twice a week for the first and second experimental groups. The data were analyzed using mixed analysis of variance. The results of the variance analysis showed that there was a significant difference between the groups in the post-test and follow-up of the quality of marital relationships (P<0.05), and the results showed that there was no significant difference between the effectiveness of schema therapy and emotion-oriented therapy in improving the quality of marital relationships. (P>0.05). It can be concluded that schema therapy and emotional therapy are two effective methods for the acceptance of spouses of couples with marital differences.