The Role of Attachment Styles and Spiritual Intelligence in Predicting Women’s Emotional Divorce

Background: Emotional divorce refers to a situation in which the emotional relationship, support, passion, warmth, attention, love, and intimacy between couples (the husband and wife) decline or diminish leading to a cold marital life to the point that the couples are only together under one roof but do not live. Accordingly, the present study aimed to explore the role of attachment styles and spiritual intelligence in predicting emotional divorce in women. Methods: This study employed a descriptive-correlational design. The research population included all women filing for divorce who referred to marriage counseling and couple therapy centers in districts 5 and 6 in Tehran. A total of 400 women who met the inclusion criteria were selected as the participants in the research sample using voluntary response and convenience sampling. The data were collected through the Emotional Divorce Scale (Gottman & Katz, 1989), the Adult Attachment Scale (Collins & Read, 1990), and Self-Report Measure of Spiritual Intelligence (King & DeCicco, 2009). The collected data were analyzed using the multiple regression analysis with SPSS software (version 22). Results: The results showed a significant positive relationship between the anxious-avoidant attachment style and emotional divorce (P <0.01). Furthermore, there was a significant negative relationship between spiritual intelligence and emotional divorce, indicating that the higher the spiritual intelligence, the lower the emotional divorce (P =0.02). Accordingly, it can be argued that spiritual intelligence and the anxious-avoidant attachment style can predict emotional divorce (MR = - 0.58). Conclusion: The present study suggested that premarital education and counseling before spouse selection help in examining the personality traits of the parties. Moreover, paying attention to the role of health professionals such as family counselors, psychologists, and psychiatric nurses in providing premarital counseling and education to couples and emphasizing the role of spiritual intelligence and attachment styles may prevent emotional separation and divorce among couples.