Personality Traits and Marital Satisfaction in Women with Extramarital Relationship: A Study in Iran

The recent increase in extramarital relationships is a great challenge for couple therapists and involved couples. Although many variables have been assigned to extramarital relationship in the previous researches, it seems to be a multi factorial issue without definite reason. Marital satisfaction and personality traits could be two contributing factors to extramarital relationship. Hence, the major aim of the present study is to evaluate personality traits and marital satisfaction in women with extramarital relationship. Two groups of 120 married women with and without the history of extramarital relationship were examined through the "Millon Clinical Multi Axial Inventory" and the "Enrich test". Our findings demonstrated that marital satisfaction in all subscales is significantly lower in women with Extramarital relationship. Depressive, negativistic and masochistic traits as well as sadistic and borderline personality traits in women with extramarital relationship were significantly more than control group. It is emphasizing the necessity for changing strategies.