The effectiveness of positive psychotherapy on marital satisfaction, cognitive emotion regulation, and marital burnout in women affected by marital infidelity.

Determining the effectiveness of positive psychotherapy on marital satisfaction, cognitive emotion regulation, and marital burnout in women affected by marital infidelity

A randomized, double-blind, parallel-group, controlled clinical trial on 30 women affected by marital infidelity. The rand function of Excel software will be used for randomization.

This study will use a field experimental research method with a pre-test, post-test, and follow-up design with a control group. The research will be conducted at the Pewand Counseling Center in Masjed-e-Suleiman on women affected by marital infidelity. All participants, clinical caregivers, outcome assessors, and statistical analysts who are responsible for measuring and interpreting the data will be double-blinded to the allocation process; all information will be kept strictly confidential, and to maintain confidentiality, all participants will be assigned abbreviations and identification codes.

Inclusion criteria Be between 20 and 50 years of age Have at least a high school diploma Have at least three years of shared marital life At least six months have passed since the disclosure of their spouse’s infidelity Exclusion criteria Having a physical illness that interferes with the treatment process Use of psychiatric medications

Intervention group: Positive psychotherapy based on the positive psychotherapy protocol of Mirdrikund et al. (2019) is implemented in a group setting in 13 90-minute sessions, one session per week. Control group: Do not receive any intervention.

Marital satisfaction; cognitive emotion regulation; marital burnout.

In this study, a simple randomization method is used to assign participants to two experimental groups (positive psychotherapy) and control. The randomization unit in this study is women affected by marital infidelity who are referred and eligible for the study. First, a complete list of volunteers who are selected based on the study's inclusion criteria (including the age range of 20 to 50 years, minimum diploma education, at least 3 years of cohabitation history, and more than 6 months have passed since the disclosure of the spouse's infidelity) and the absence of exclusion criteria (such as physical illnesses that interfere with the treatment process and the use of psychiatric medications) is prepared. Then, a unique numerical identification code is assigned to each participant. These codes are entered into the Random Number Generator software and a random number is generated for each individual. After generating these numbers, the participants are sorted in ascending order based on the value of the random number. Then, the individuals are assigned to two groups; The first 15 people on the list are assigned sequentially to the experimental group (recipients of the positive psychotherapy intervention) and the next 15 people to the control group (on the waiting list). With this method, the order of entry into the study and the researcher's knowledge of the participants will not play any role in determining the group. To conceal the allocation, the person responsible for entering the data and carrying out the randomization process in the software will be independent of the intervention administrators and the evaluators of the research variables (including marital satisfaction, cognitive emotion regulation, and marital burnout) and will not have the possibility of knowing the process of implementing the sessions or changing the allocation of the individuals. Also, the identification codes of the participants are kept confidential and separate from their other personal information. Therefore, it will not be possible to predict the assigned group for each participant before the randomization process.

In order to control bias and improve the internal validity of the research, this study was designed with a double-blind protocol; in this way, the outcome assessor and data analyst will be kept unaware of the allocation of women affected by marital infidelity to the experimental (positive psychotherapy) and control groups. In this process, the outcome assessor will collect and measure the dependent variables (marital satisfaction, cognitive emotion regulation, and marital burnout) at all stages of the pretest, posttest, and follow-up, without knowing the assigned group of the participants, in order to prevent bias in the measurement; also, all raw data will be provided to the statistical analyst with anonymous codes (such as groups 1 and 2), and the true nature of the groups (positive intervention group versus control group) will not be revealed until the end of the data analysis process. All allocation steps are performed by an individual independent of the research team, and allocation codes are decoded only after the final completion of statistical analyses.

Participant data is completely confidential and I do not intend to publish it.