Numerous studies have examined the role of psychotherapy and culture on romantic relationships and the influence on relationship quality and forgiveness. Psychotherapy has been found to increase relationship quality (Wiebe et al., 2017), improve subjective well-being (Medina et al., 2023; Furchtlehner et al., 2024), and life satisfaction (Furchtlehner et al., 2024) . On the other hand, forgiveness has been found to be increased for people in psychotherapy (Jain & Arya, 2024), but also in a meta-analysis, forgiveness was associated with higher subjective well-being (Feng et al., 2022).


The current study is structured with three aims. In aim 1, we will examine how couples in which either one or both partners have received psychotherapy differ from couples in which neither of the partners has received psychotherapy in terms of relationship satisfaction and forgiveness. In aim 2, we will explore how cultural factors influence these associations across northern and southern European contexts. Lastly, in aim 3 we will investigate if forgiveness has a mediator role in the relationship between psychotherapy and relationship satisfaction and whether there is a direct or indirect and a positive or negative effect.


The present study will try to advance our understanding of the relation between psychotherapy and culture on romantic relationships dynamics across Europe along with the influence of relationship satisfaction and forgiveness. To examine the effect of culture, a cross-cultural design will be employed, and data will be collected from northern and southern European countries .
Finally , we hope that future research and clinical guidelines will benefit from an improved understanding of the role of psychotherapy and culture in couple dynamics. We hope that the results will offer useful information about the relationships between psychotherapy, culture, relationship satisfaction and forgiveness, and will highlight relevant facilitators and barriers.