Date
5-22-2024
Department
School of Behavioral Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Education in Community Care and Counseling (EdD)
Chair
Pamela Moore
Keywords
PISD, post-infidelity stress disorder, marital infidelity, post-infidelity stress, post infidelity stress disorder, PTSD, Infidelity, marriage, divorce, separation, avoidance, revenge, benevolence, moderation, healing, forgiveness, religious beliefs, core beliefs, affair, adultery, cheating, religion, Christian, Christianity, Christian, transgression, marital repair
Disciplines
Counseling | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Recommended Citation
Roby, Faith Christie Leigh, "Infidelity, Post-Infidelity Stress Disorder, and Post-Infidelity Stress Marital Outcomes" (2024). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 5703.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/5703
Abstract
Marital infidelity discovery has been noted in the literature for traumatic emotional, behavioral, and psychological reactions in the injured spouse, but not extensively in terms of post-infidelity stress disorder. To that end, this cross-sectional quantitative anonymous online survey study explored marital infidelity, post-infidelity stress disorder and post-infidelity marital outcomes in 202 participants using certain frameworks, such as Glass’s traumatic aftershock and Ortman’s post-infidelity stress disorder. This researcher sought to investigate whether there is a relationship between post-infidelity stress disorder that is moderated by religious/core beliefs and marital repair efforts and marital outcomes of healing, forgiveness, benevolence, revenge, avoidance, divorce/desire to divorce, or separation/desire to separate; whether infidelity discovery, duration of marital infidelity, marital repair efforts, or lack of marital repair efforts predicted post-infidelity stress disorder level using multiple linear regression; and whether there were differences in healing, forgiveness, benevolence, revenge, avoidance, divorce/desire to divorce, or separation/desire between participants with post-infidelity stress disorder and without post-infidelity stress disorder using multivariate analysis of variance: special interactions and effects. Findings showed that religious/core beliefs with marital repair efforts did not act as moderators but had other statistically significant main effects (e.g., marital repair efforts negatively predicted revenge), lack of marital repair efforts and discovery positively predicted post-infidelity stress disorder level, shorter duration negatively predicted post-infidelity stress disorder level, the post-infidelity stress disorder group had statistically significant higher levels of avoidance and revenge than the non-post-infidelity stress disorder group, and the non-post-infidelity stress disorder had higher levels of forgiveness and healing than the post-infidelity stress disorder group. Future research should examine if religious/core beliefs or marital repair efforts act as mediators between post-infidelity stress disorder and post-infidelity marital outcomes.
