Effectiveness of Emotion-Focused Counseling Based on Islamic Teachings on Intimacy of Incompatible Couples

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of emotion-focused counseling model based on Islamic teachings on the level of intimacy in incompatible couples. Methods: In the first stage, the research methodology was used in a qualitative way to extract the Islamic themes about emotion regulation and assess its content validity through a survey of experts in the field. For the second stage, the experimental research method  was conducted in the framework of a pseudo-experimental design, utilizing a pre-test and post-test type, with a control group. The statistical population was selected from among 30 volunteers who had been selected from all married clients experiencing marital conflicts and referring to Yara counseling center in city of Saveh in the second half of the year 2017. They were randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. The toolds for gathering information included Thompson & Walker's Intimacy Scale (1983) and the Bagarozzi Marital Intimacy Needs (MINQ) Questionnaire. The program was run for 10 sessions of 90-minute group counseling for the experimental group, and the control group did not receive any training. Multivariate covariance analysis was used for data analysis. Findings: The research results indicated that the designed model had an appropriate validity (CVR =0.7125) and significantly increased the marital intimacy and its dimensions: emotional intimacy, psychological, intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic, and social-recreational, but it has no significant effect on the two dimensions, sexual and physical. Conclusions: It can be concluded that an emotion-focused counseling based on Islamic teachings model can help inconsistent couples gain more emotional control and more intimacy as an effective way.