Examining the Role of Women’s Coping Strategies and Interaction Patterns in Spousal Addiction: A Qualitative Study
Keywords:
Addiction, men, women, interaction pattern, coping strategy, qualitativeAbstract
Objective: The objective of this study was to examine the role of women’s coping strategies and interaction patterns in their husbands’ addiction.
Methods and Materials: The present study employed a qualitative design using an interpretative phenomenological approach. Among married women residing in Tehran who had sought counseling and psychotherapy services in the city of Tehran due to their husbands’ substance use disorder and whose husbands had a history of substance abuse exceeding one year, 26 participants were selected through purposive sampling and interviewed. The interviews were analyzed using Diekelmann, Allen, and Tanner’s interpretative phenomenological analysis method.
Findings: Analysis of the participants’ lived experiences led to the identification of two main themes and nine subthemes: (1) Ineffective coping strategies: destructive conflict, absolute ignoring, excessive blaming, and pathological internalization; (2) Destructive and facilitating interaction patterns: avoidant pattern, conflicting pattern, coercive pattern, mutual avoidance pattern, and excessively demanding pattern.
Conclusion: Elucidating these factors not only enhances knowledge and awareness regarding the reasons for and mechanisms through which women influence their spouses’ inclination toward substance use and its persistence and escalation, but also reveals that focusing on women and improving certain intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects of their functioning can complement preventive and therapeutic programs in the field of men’s addiction.
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