Purpose: The present study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of the schema therapy approach with the therapy based on acceptance and commitment on the self-control of married women and men with extramarital relationships.
Materials and methods: In this research, the statistical population included married men and women who had an extramarital relationship, who, due to the disclosure of their extramarital relationship, in the 12 months of 2019 and the first 9 months of 2014, went to four counseling and psychological clinics in Tehran, which are available. The researcher of this research was located, they referred. Among the couples, 45 were randomly selected (23 women and 22 men). To implement the project, the researcher used the purposeful sampling method and the self-control questionnaire of Tanji (2004) was distributed among three groups of subjects (two experimental groups and one control group). Then the effect of independent variable or two treatment methods on two dependent variables was compared. After conducting 10 ninety-minute sessions of schema therapy once a week and 8 ninety-minute sessions of therapy based on acceptance and commitment once a week, the experimental and control groups were subjected to a post-test. In this research, the analysis of covariance test was used to analyze the data, and the independent t-test was used to compare the effectiveness of schema therapy and treatment based on acceptance and commitment.
Findings: The findings showed that self-control in the experimental group of schema therapy increased by 31.66. Also, self-control in the test group of acceptance and commitment increased by 37.87 in the post-test, while in the control group, the increase in both groups was below one score, and the covariance analysis confirmed the effectiveness of the two approaches on self-control. Also, the findings showed that there is no significant difference between the two treatment approaches in terms of effectiveness in self-control.
Conclusion: Based on the findings, the schema therapy approach with treatment based on acceptance and commitment has a significant effect on the self-control of married women and men with extramarital relationships.