The Effectiveness of Emotion-Oriented Treatment on Cognitive Flexibility and Social Commitment in Divorced Couples

Introduction: Marriage as the most important social behavior to achieve emotional needs and security has always been considered by all psychologists, counselors, and other mental health professionals. Marriage is a complex, delicate, and dynamic relationship. Having a strong, warm, intimate and mutually respectful family is one of the consequences of a successful marriage that can lead to physical and mental health, comfort, peace, and safety of spouses and family members. The phenomenon of divorce is one of the most complex problems in married life in all societies and this complexity is due to the role of various individual, social, economic, cultural, and political factors in the occurrence of this phenomenon. The devastating effects of this social phenomenon cover a wide range and in addition to couples, it will also affect their children and threaten their mental health and quality of life; In this way, by creating a negative attitude towards marriage in children, it damages the quality of their future marital relations. The rising trend of divorce statistics and the existence of conflicts and turmoil in coupleschr(chr('39')39chr('39')) relationships have increased the motivation of researchers to find effective factors and appropriate solutions to deal with this relationship breakdown. Non-marital commitment is one of the effective factors in creating divorce between couples. Because one of the important characteristics of successful and long-term marriages is the existence of marital commitment, in fact, among the various human interactions, commitment is the most important qualitative aspect of a relationship. Adherence to the marriage covenant is also very important as a lasting mechanism and is one of the characteristics of successful and long-term marriages. Commitment to marriage increases life satisfaction and marital satisfaction. Also, another variable that plays a role in family health and well-being is cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility refers to the degree to which an individual is experiential in the face of external and internal experiences. This personality trait exists in different people to different degrees and determines the type of reaction of people to new experiences. Today, various approaches to couple therapy and family therapy have been developed with the aim of reducing conflicts and communication disorders between couples. The goal of couple therapy is to help couples cope better with current problems and learn more effective ways to communicate. In the first stage, this treatment evaluates the coupleschr(chr('39')39chr('39')) communication style, and after the defenses are revealed, it reveals this style to the couple and determines its consequences, which is why couples gradually succeed. Recognize the repressed and subtle emotions that perpetuate this negative communication cycle and stop this cycle and improve their relationships based on interventions that have been proven to be effective in numerous studies. Thus, based on the above, it is clear that this type of intervention can be used in a couple of therapies. However, so far no research has specifically evaluated the effectiveness of this intervention on the components involved in coupleschr(chr('39')39chr('39')) satisfaction with the marital relationship. This makes it difficult to generalize the data. The present study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of this type of treatment on the two components of cognitive flexibility and social commitment of couples on men and women seeking a divorce. Materials and Methods: The present study is applied in terms of purpose and semi-experimental in terms of method, in which a pre-test-post-test design with a control group and follow-up stage was used. The present study with the code IR.BPUMS.REC.1399.106 was approved by the ethics committee of Bushehr University of Medical Sciences. The research method was quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The statistical population of the present study consisted of all couples seeking a divorce in Malayer in 1398. The statistical sample consisted of 30 pairs that were selected by the available sampling method and randomly assigned to experimental (15 couples) and control (15 couples) groups. Criteria for entering the study were the complete consent of the couple to participate in the study, as well as the ability to attend regular sessions, not to use psychiatric drugs during treatment, and in the case of psychotherapy or medication, at least 6 months have passed. In addition, at least one year must have passed since their marriage and they have filed for divorce, while the couples participating in the study were matched in the experimental and control groups in terms of the age range, level of education, and economic status. After identifying the sample group, research tools were provided to both groups and the results were considered as a pretest. In the next stage, the subjects in the experimental group underwent 12 one-hour sessions of emotion therapy intervention. Dennis and Vanderwall (2010) and Adams and Joneschr(chr('39')39chr('39'))s (1997) Social Commitment Questionnaire were used to collecting data. The experimental group underwent 12 one-hour sessions of emotion therapy intervention. Data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance. Results: The results showed that F values in post-test (5.30) and follow-up (7.67) of cognitive flexibility as well as post-test (15.24) and follow-up (25.46) of social commitment and also Their level of significance is less than 0.05, it is observed that there is a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in all variables in both post-test and follow-up stages (P <0.05). Conclusion: Based on this, it can be stated that emotional therapy is effective on the components of flexibility and social commitment in couples seeking divorce and this type of intervention can be used in counseling and treatment of couples, especially couples with conflict. Used. Since this research has been done on couples seeking divorce in Malayer city, so caution should be exercised in generalizing the results. Another limitation of the present study was the reliance on data from the self-report questionnaire that in this style of data collection, the participant is likely to have difficulty expressing their emotions and cognitions, so it is suggested to increase statistical power and reliability of the findings to collect information from methods. Use as an interview or qualitative study. The results of the present study can be generalized and applied in different situations by considering the said limitations. It is also recommended that counselors provide reality therapy training courses for couples at risk of divorce.