Relationships require effort for both partners to be happy and satisfied. Everywhere you look, people are handing out advice for a better relationship. But not all relationship advice is created equal. Here are a few things that have been proven to enhance relationships, provided to you by your Bethesda counseling experts. Hold Hands Holding hands ... Read More
According to various studies, marriage rates are on the decline at a staggering 50% of first marriages ending in divorce. While this is a high percentage, it has also remained at 50% for the last 30 years. There are many different factors that contribute to divorce rates, including partners’ level of education, religious beliefs, and ... Read More
Most engaged couples don’t think about it, but when you are planning your wedding, are you also preparing for your marriage? Recent studies have shown that couples who went through premarital counseling prior to walking down the aisle experienced a 30 percent decline in the likelihood of divorce over a five-year period. Some houses of ... Read More
At a Caring Approach, Couples Counseling in Bethesda, MD by Dr. Durana, we help couples develop relationship skills, enhance intimacy, and communicate and resolve conflicts effectively. In our intimate relationships, we tend to hold unconscious or unexpressed expectations about love, trust, friendship, power, disagreement, etc. Unmet expectations lead to disappointments and misunderstandings. Often, underlying these ... Read More
At A Caring Approach in Bethesda, we work with couples and families to decrease stress, and to improve communication and relationship satisfaction. Although relationship problems can vary, there are a few underlying issues common to most conflicts. Problems can exist in areas having to do with money, intimacy, communication, sex, support, gender, housework, loyalties to ... Read More
A Caring Approach offers couples counseling and marriage counseling in Reston, VA, Washington, DC, and Bethesda, MD. Our ability to communicate is essential for creating and sustaining a satisfying relationship. Often, the style of communication is more of a problem than the problem you are communicating about. Under stress, people use defensive communication styles that ... Read More
The capacity to make meaningful intimate bonds is a key feature of healthy personality functioning. The processes of attachment and intimacy are fundamental to the development of close relationships. Attachment refers to the inborn need and tendency of human beings to make strong affectionate bonds with significant others, resulting in closeness, security and safety. Attachment ... Read More
The choice of intimate others in relationships appears to be influenced by two important needs whose fulfillment results in completion, wholeness, and the development of higher capacities such as compassion, forgiveness, and kindness for couples. First, we are attracted to differences; we seek partners with qualities that we are missing ourselves. These traits were repressed ... Read More
Traps and Exits We all have vulnerabilities, sensitivities or wounds that are inevitably triggered in intimate long-term relationships. For example, for one person, it may be feeling criticized; for another it may be not feeling adequately cared for, and so on. Those sensibilities emerge and develop from woundings in family relationships with parents, siblings and ... Read More
Love is a fundamental aspect of human experience. What is love? What is love in intimate relationships? Efforts to understand love abound over thousands of years of recorded human history, from those of poets to theologians to philosophers, for the experience of love or lack of it affects us all in some way. Adult love ... Read More
