The investigating of the role of marital disillusionment in attitudes toward infidelity with the moderating role of emotional intelligence

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of marital disillusionment in attitudes toward extramarital relationships with the moderating role of emotional intelligence. This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on married people referring to psychological and counseling centers in Tehran in 2019. 250 people were selected by cluster sampling method from three centers. In order to collect data, The population information form, Attitude towards Infidelity Scale (Whatley, 2008), Marital Disillusionment scale (Niehuis and Bartell, 2006), and Emotional Quotient Inventory (Bar-on, 1997) were used. Data analysis was performed in SPSS software version 19 using the Pearson correlation coefficient and the linear regression. The results showed that attitudes toward extramarital relationships were positively related to marital disillusionment and negatively related to emotional intelligence (P<0.05). Also, there is a negative and significant relationship between emotional intelligence and marital disillusionment (P<0.05). The results of the regression analysis showed that marital disillusionment (β=0.296) and emotional intelligence (β=-0.304)  explained 0.24 of the changes in attitudes toward extramarital relationships. But emotional intelligence can not have a moderating effect.   According to the results of the present study, in counseling and educating couples with the aim of reducing extramarital relationships, it is necessary to pay attention to strategies to reduce marital disillusionment and increase emotional intelligence.