Abstract

Marital satisfaction and stability in course of couple relationship has been the topic of interest in many studies. Some of couples are dissatisfied with their marriage and they end in divorce. Dissatisfying marriages are not always ended. In order to find better understanding on the reasons behind the formation, continuous and end of relationship, social exchange theory is usually utilized. The purpose of this study was to find out the factors that caused dissatisfied married individuals to hold their relationship together. This study was a qualitative study that used semi-structured deep interview. 12 married individuals were selected by purposeful sampling. Data analysis addressed the content of marriage functions among Iranian married individual with low marital satisfaction. 6 main themes and 20 subthemes were emerged from the data. These main themes revealed marriage functions of psychological, child- related, value- related, sex, social, and economic which made participants hold their marriage together. It was explained in the discussion part of the study that how some of basic components of social exchange theory differ between our participants in the current study. 

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