The relationship between emotional intelligence health and marital satisfaction: A comparative study

INTRODUCTION: Marriage is known as the most important incident in everyone's life after birth. The most important purpose of marriage is achieving a life followed with love and affection beside the spouse and providing mental comfort and general health. The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence health and marital satisfaction among married people. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The research method is descriptive- analytic and its design is comparative, done on 226 people including 114 persons (50 women and 64 men) having marital conflicts, and 112 people (58 women and 54 men) having marital satisfaction, by cluster random sampling from 13 districts of the city of Isfahan. Bar-on (with 90 questions) and Enrich marital satisfaction (115 questions) questionnaires were used for collecting the required information. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics including independent t-tests, Pearson correlation, and linear regression analysis, using SPSS software version 19. RESULTS: The results from the research showed that the scores of emotional intelligence in married people group having marriage conflicts who had referred to the administration of justice was 57.3 ± 13.2, and the random sample from the married people in the city of Isfahan as the comparing group had the score of 67.2 ± 9.5, and the difference of the average scores for the emotional intelligence for the two groups was significant (P < 0.001). The correlation analysis showed that there was a significant and positive relation between emotional intelligence and marital satisfaction (P < 0.001, r = 0.529). The results of linear regression also showed that the general emotional intelligence predicts the quality of marital satisfaction. The emotion of the predicting line of the marital satisfaction score (y) is in the form of: y = 14.8 + 0.656x, by using the emotional intelligence score (x). CONCLUSION: Regarding the close relations between emotional intelligence and marital satisfaction, education centers such as universities, organizations and family clinics could use this variable in micro- and macro-social plans for improving the quality of the married people relations and promoting health of the families and the society.