تفاوت راهبردهای تنظیم هیجان در متاهلین بر اساس جنسیت، طول مدت ازدواج و سطوح رضایت زناشویی

Introduction: Emotion regulation is a fundamental process in social and interpersonal relationships, especially marital relationships. This concept refers to a set of cognitive and behavioral processes that are used to manage the experience and expression of emotions (Gross, 2015). According to the model of Garnefsky et al (2002), emotion regulation is carried out through cognitive strategies that are consciously and purposefully used to reinterpret stressful situations and reduce negative emotions. This model introduces two categories of strategies: adaptive strategies such as acceptance, positive reappraisal and reprogramming, and maladaptive strategies such as self-blame, catastrophizing and rumination.

The importance of emotion regulation in marital relationships is particularly significant, because the quality of couples' interactions, conflict resolution and relationship satisfaction depend to a large extent on their ability to manage emotions (Bloch et al., 2014). Marital satisfaction is one of the main indicators of mental health and family adjustment and reflects individuals' positive attitudes towards various aspects of the marital relationship. Previous studies have pointed out the difference between the ability to regulate emotion in couples with high and low levels of marital satisfaction. Avatkarim et al. (2014) pointed out the use of adaptive strategies in couples with higher marital satisfaction and their low scores in using maladaptive strategies. Bagheri et al. (2024) emphasized the importance of emotion regulation skills, stating that couples who have reached emotional separation in their marital relationship lacked sufficient skills for emotion regulation.

Several individual and situational factors affect emotion regulation in relationships. One of them is the duration of marriage. The results of the study by Masumoto et al. (2021) showed that the use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies decreases over the duration of marriage; In other words, increasing years of marriage act as a buffer against negative psychological consequences resulting from the regulation of spouses' emotions. Gender also affects the choice of emotion regulation strategies. The use of specific emotion regulation strategies and the degree of involvement of the nervous system in women and men in the field of emotion regulation are two frequently cited findings in previous research (Goubet and Chrysikou, 2019)

A simultaneous examination of these three factors can provide a more accurate understanding of couples' emotional patterns and help identify factors that play a role in maintaining or weakening marital satisfaction. Accordingly, the present study aimed to compare emotion regulation strategies in married couples based on gender, duration of marriage, and level of marital satisfaction in order to provide a comprehensive picture of the interaction between these variables within the framework of marital relationships.

Method: The present study is descriptive-comparative and cross-sectional. The statistical population included all married men and women in the country in 2025 who were active on social networks. A sample of479 people was selected using the convenience method, and after removing incomplete data, the final analysis was conducted on 446 people (266women and 180 men). Inclusion criteria included permanent marriage, cohabitation, first marriage, and no divorce request. Two tools were used to collect data: the ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Questionnaire (ENRICH) by Favors and Olson (1993) and the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies Questionnaire (CERQ) by Greensky et al. (2002). In this study, gender, duration of marriage, and levels of marital satisfaction were used as comparison factors. Duration of marriage was categorized into 4 categories: 1-5 years, 5-10 years, 10-15 years, and 15 years or more, and levels of marital satisfaction were also examined in three categories based on the ENRICH scale. At the descriptive level, mean and standard deviation were used, and at the inferential level, one-way and multivariate analysis of variance statistical methods were used. All statistical operations were performed with SPSS version 26 software.

Results: The average age of women was 35/47 and men was 40/78. The highest frequency was related to the group of marriages over 15 years (171 people). In terms of marital satisfaction, 95 people were at an average level and 351 people were at a high level. Before testing the hypotheses, the results of the skewness and kurtosis indices showed that the data had a normal distribution and the assumptions of the Levine and M-box tests were also valid.

In order to control for type I error resulting from multiple univariate tests, the Bonferroni correction was used. The initial significance level of the study (α = 0.05) was divided by the number of dependent variables, resulting in a modified significance level of 0.005. Based on this modified significance level, only rumination and acceptance strategies were significantly different between women and men and refocusing on planning and positive reappraisal strategies were significantly different between individuals with moderate and high marital satisfaction. Other effects that were significant at the initial significance level (p < 0.05) in Table 4 did not reach significance after applying the Bonferroni correction.

Discussion: The results of the present study showed that after applying Bonferroni correction, rumination and acceptance strategies were significantly different between women and men; in such a way that women scored higher than men in these two strategies. From the perspective of gender socialization, women are more encouraged to emotionally process experiences and pay attention to internal states, while men are led to problem-focused confrontation with stressful situations. Also, levels of marital satisfaction are only significantly related to adaptive strategies of refocusing on planning and positive reappraisal. Couples who experience higher levels of marital satisfaction and intimacy live in a safe emotional environment characterized by mutual support and empathy. These couples are more likely to use active cognitive strategies such as positive reappraisal and problem-solving planning when faced with stressful events. The limitations of the present study include the convenience sampling method, the cross-sectional nature of the design, and the self-report nature of the instrument, namely questionnaires. Also, the research data was collected individually and not as couples. Therefore, generalization of the results should be done with caution, and it is suggested that these limitations be addressed in future studies.