Explaining the Processes of Marital Commitment Erosion in the Age of Social Media
Keywords:
Marital commitment, social media, online infidelity, marital trust, thematic analysis, Iranian couplesAbstract
This study aimed to explain the psychological, relational, and interactional processes through which social media use contributes to the erosion of marital commitment. This qualitative study employed a thematic analysis approach. The participants were 24 married individuals living in Tehran, selected through purposive sampling with attention to gender, marriage duration, educational level, and intensity of social media use. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews, and sampling continued until theoretical saturation was achieved. After obtaining informed consent, all interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using NVivo software. Data analysis followed the phases of familiarization, initial coding, theme development, theme review, theme definition, and final reporting. To enhance trustworthiness, member checking, peer coding, analytic memoing, and an audit trail were used. Four main categories emerged from the interviews: “shifting the focus of attention from marital life to digital life,” “weakening fidelity boundaries and normalizing parallel intimacies,” “intensification of social comparison and relational dissatisfaction,” and “the cycle of surveillance, suspicion, and trust fatigue.” Participants described how unregulated social media use reduced couple communication, weakened emotional presence, blurred the boundary between ordinary interaction and emotional infidelity, and increased mistrust within the marital relationship. The findings indicate that marital commitment erosion in the age of social media is not a sudden event but a gradual and multilayered process shaped by reduced emotional presence, intensified comparison, weakened digital boundaries, and recurrent suspicion. Couple therapy and marital education programs should incorporate digital relational literacy, explicit negotiation of online fidelity boundaries, transparent communication about privacy, and trust-rebuilding strategies.
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