Abstract:
Marriage is a conscious union between man and woman for lifetime integration. However, dissatisfaction among married individuals records consequential effects such as domestic violence, suicidal ideation, depression, burnout, emotional withdrawal, divorce and murder. In Nigeria, most previous efforts focused on religious approach without recourse to psycho-emotional interventions such as imago relationship and integrative behavioural couple therapies. This study, therefore, was carried out to examine the effects of Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT) and Integrative Behavioural Couple Therapy (IBCT) on marital dissatisfaction among married individuals in Catholic churches in Lagos State, Nigeria. It further ascertained the moderating effects of religiosity and socio-economic status.
The study was anchored to Evolutionary Theory of marital Dissatisfaction, while the pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental design with 3x3x2 factorial matrix was adopted. The multi-stage sampling procedure was used. The simple random sampling technique was utilised to select three Catholic church (Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of Fatima and Corpus Christi) in three senatorial districts in Lagos State, Nigeria. The participants were screened with Marital Dissatisfaction Scale (α =0.79) and those who scored high against the threshold of 30 totalling 96 were selected. The participants in churches were randomly assigned to IRT (32), IBCT (31) and control (33) groups. The instruments used were Marital Dissatisfaction (α =0.79); Religiosity (α =0.87); and Socio-economic Status (α =0.73) scales.The intervention lasted eight weeks. Data were analysed using Analysis of covariance and Scheffe Post hoc test at 0.05 level of significance.
The participants’ age was 37.00±0.94 years, and 56.3% were females. There was a significant main effect of treatment on marital dissatisfaction among married individuals of Catholic churches (F(2;77) = 151.781; partial 𝜂2= 798). The participants exposed to IRT (61.43) had the lowest marital dissatisfaction mean score, followed by the IBCT (3.03) and control (105.80) groups. The Socio-economic status had a significant main effect on marital dissatisfaction (F(2;77)= 4.363; partial η2= 0.102).The participants with high socio-economic status (72.83) recorded the least marital dissatisfaction mean score followed by those with moderate socio-economic status (86.98) and those with low socio-economic status (91.55). Religiosity had a significant main effect on marital dissatisfaction (F(1;77)= 8.928, partial η2= 0.104). The participants with high religiosity displayed lower (85.369) marital dissatisfaction mean score than those with low religiosity (93.368). There was a significant interaction effect of treatment and socio-economic status on marital dissatisfaction among married individuals of Catholic churches (F(4;77) = 2.771; partial 𝜂2= 126), in favour of the participants with high socio-economic status in IRT group. The interaction effect of treatment and religiosity was notsignificant. The three-way interaction effect of treatment, religiosity and socio-economic status was not significant.
Imago relationship and Integrative behavioural couple therapies reduce marital dissatisfaction, among married individuals of Catholic churches in Lagos State, Nigeria with more emphasis on religiosity and socio-economic status. It is therefore, recommended that individualspreparing for marriage should be exposed to these therapies during pre-marriage counsellingsessions to curtail marital dissatisfaction.
