Comparison of the Effectiveness of Emotionally Focused Therapy and Self-Compassion Skills Training on Differentiation of Self and Sexual Intimacy of Women Affected by Marital Infidelity

Background and Aims: This study amid to compare the effectiveness of emotionally focused therapy(EFT) and self-compassion skills training on differentiation of self and sexual intimacy of women affected by marital infidelity. Methods: It was a quasi-experimental study and the statistical population included all women affected by marital infidelity Mashhad in 2019-2020.A statistical sample consisted of 45 women who referred to psychological clinics and were selected using available sampling and were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups (15 people in each group). The intervention groups received emotionally focused training and self-compassion separately for 8 sessions of 90minutes and the control group was on the waiting list. The Differentiation of Self-Inventory Revised(DSI-R) of Skowron and Schmitt (2003) and the Inventory Sexual Intimacy of Botlani et al. (2010) were used to collect data. Data were analyzed by repeated measures analysis of variance using the SPSS 24 software. Results: The results indicated that both treatments were effective in increasing the level of differentiation of self and sexual intimacy, but the effectiveness of the emotionally focused approach on the differentiation of self was significant compared to self-compassion (p 0.05). Conclusion: The findings showed that emotionally focused therapy training can be used as an effective intervention for improving the psychological resilience of women affected by marital infidelity by creating new patterns in the relationship.