THE STUDY OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TRAINING THE PRINCIPLES OF IMPROVING THE RELATIONSHIPS BASED ON GOTTMAN'S METHOD ON COUPLES' MARITAL SATISFACTION IN TEHRAN

ABSTRACT Background and Aims: marital satisfaction is one of the most important factors of progress and achieving life goals which is affected by couples' emotional stability. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to study the effectiveness of training the principles of improving the relationships based on Gottman's method on couples' marital satisfaction in Tehran. Materials and Method: It was a quasiexperimental research with pretest-posttest and control group. Statistical population involved all the couples without child that at least two years have passed since their marriage and they referred to psychotherapy and family health clinics in Tehran in 2013 and 2014. The sample included 40 couples who referred to these clinics to get marital counseling and they were selected by random cluster sampling. Then, they randomly divided into control and experimental groups (20 couples in each group). ENRICH couple scale (1997) and Gottman's couples' therapy scale (2009) was used to collect data in both pretest and posttest. The experimental group exposed to the independent variable (training the principles of improving the relationships based on Gottman's method) for two sessions of five hours. Statistical analyses performed to analyze data included ANCOVA test. Findings: The findings showed that training the principles of improving the relationships based on Gottman's method had no significant effect on couples' marital satisfaction (P > .05); but has been effective on its subscales (emotional relationships, quality of sexual relationships s, trust, compromise and commitment) (P ≤ .05). Results: The results showed that training the principles of improving the relationships based on Gottman's method can be a very effective way to increase marital satisfaction subscales and improve the couples' relationships