The Relationship between Personality Characteristics, General Health, Contextual Factors, and Marital Dissatisfaction of Couples

Abstract

Marital disaffection is the gradual loss of an emotional attachment, including a decline in caring about the partner, an emotional estrangement, and an increasing sense of apathy and indifference toward one’s partner. The aim of this research was to determine the relation between personality characteristics, general health and marital disaffection. The research procedure was correlational. The populations were consisted of all couples in Isfahan (1388) with the age of marriage being at least three years. Subjects were 200 couples (100 male and 100 female) who were randomly selected using multi-stage cluster sampling. Research hypotheses were that personality characteristics, general health and contextual factors predict marital disaffection. The measures were comprised of Marital Disaffection Scale, Big-Five Factor Questionnaire (short form), General Health Questionnaire and Contextual Factors Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using pearson correlation method and step by step regression analysis. The results showed that there were significant relationships between marital disaffection and personality characteristics in subscales of extroversion and agreeableness and general health in the subscale of anxiety. Also there were significant relationships between marital disaffection and contextual factors in subscales of marriage duration and economical status. Finally with regard to the results some suggestions for decreasing of couple’s marital disaffection were made.

Keywords

• marital disaffection
• personality characteristics
• mental health