Existential Phenomena in Men's Marital Infidelity

Document Type : علمی - پژوهشی

Authors

1 Isfahan University

2 Professor, Department of Counseling, Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Isfahan

3 Assistant Professor, Department of Counseling, Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Isfahan

4 Professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education and Psychology, University del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia

Abstract

Explaining the cause of tendency to marital infidelity, especially among people with religious backgrounds, merely focusing on elements such as emotional-sexual dissatisfaction or marital conflict, is a sort of superficial. The purpose of this study is to analyze the phenomena in men's marital infidelity. The method of the current study is based on the interpretive phenomenological method. The researcher selected and interviewed 18 married men who had committed infidelity in Shahindaj city, West-Azerbaijan, Iran to participate in the study using purposive sampling. Interviews were analyzed using the interpretive- phenomenological analysis method of Dickelman & et al. The analysis of these people led to the identification of six sub-themes (escape from contemplation &pause, escape from destiny, struggle with existential loneliness, hollow and desireoriented love, value transformation and escape from existential emptiness) and a major theme (of existential alienation). Revealing these factors not only increases information and awareness about the how cues of marital infidelity is formed and intensified from an existential point of view, but also showed that increasing one's awareness toward one's nature and leads to reducing alienation from its dimensions; these issues are things that can reduce a one's desire to the experience of marital infidelity.

Keywords