Influence of religious commitment, intentionality in marriage and forgiveness on marital satisfaction among married couples

The study investigated the influence of religious commitment, intentionality in marriage and forgiveness on marital satisfaction among married couples. 189 married respondents comprising 100 females and 89 males participated in the study. The participants were within the age bracket of 25-44 years with a mean age of 36.44years and a standard deviation of 6.55. The following measures were used in the study. Kansas Marital Goals Orientation Scale (KMGOS) developed by Eggeman, Moxley and Schumm (1985) measuring intentionality in a marital relationship; Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS) developed by Thompson and Synder (2003) designed to assess a person’s dispositional forgiveness; Religious Commitment Inventory RCI–17 developed by McCullough et al. (1997) measures religious commitment and Index of Marital Satisfaction developed by Hudson (1992) measuring level of satisfaction in marriage. The purposive sampling techniques were used to select the sample size and these were drawn from married staff of Caritas University and Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Enugu, South East Nigeria. This was used due to the availability of sample. Cross sectional research design was adopted and ANOVA statistics was used to analyze the data. The results indicate that intentionality in marriage and forgiveness significantly influenced marital satisfaction respectively (F(1,177) = 96.83 p<.05; F(1,177) = 211.87, p<.05). Also religious commitment did not significantly influence marital satisfaction (F(1,177) = 3.20, p > .05) and there was a significant interaction influence of the independent variables on marital satisfaction (F(1,177) = 3.15, p< .05)Keywords: religious commitment, marital conflict, spousal intentions, forgiveness, South East nigeria