Premarital Heterosexual Relationships and its Association with Marital Satisfaction among Married College Students in Tehran

Despite increasing trends towards premarital heterosexual relationships among youth and marital dissatisfaction among couples, few studies have examined the association between these two phenomena. This paper aims to assess the relationship between experience or premarital heterosexual relationships (both friendship & sexual) with marital satisfaction. This paper is based on the survey data of a mix method study conducted in 2011-2012. In this paper, 299 married college students, both males and females aged 18-40 were recruited using stratified cluster sampling from all educational levels of 7 selected universities, both private and government universities. A valid and reliable self-administered anonymous questionnaire was employed and piloted. Results of path analysis indicated that the greatest coefficient of impact on marital satisfaction is associated with knowing personality of spouse at the stage of marriage (B=0.435, P<0.001), and then the experience of multiple heterosexual relationships before marriage is another factor which had the highest negative effect on marital satisfaction (B=-0.282, p