“Only married people can understand how you can be miserable and happy at the same time.” That’s a quote from one of my favorite comedians, Chris Rock.

Only married people can understand how you can be miserable and happy at the same time. That’s a quote from one of my favorite comedians, Chris Rock. Our marriage is the most important relationship we have in our lives. It’s also the most complicated and dynamic. Today, my two guests will share how we can elevate our marriage, our connection, and our communication without fear and uncertainty.

Seth Studley. He is a licensed marriage and family therapist, and his wife Melanie Studley. She’s a marriage expert and a motivational speaker. They are changing the face of relationship advice with their podcast, along with their resources, and it’s called The Anatomy of Us.

Seth and Melanie know firsthand what it takes to change and heal, and they are using their knowledge to make the resources they wish they had 13 years ago when Melanie gave Seth a black eye. They merge hard earned relationship advice with raw and real teaching to approach and transform the marriages of their podcast listeners and their coaching clients, helping couples all over the world to create the fulfilling relationship that they deserve.

The Studley’s talk about how we can take personal accountability and extreme ownership as the first step to healing any relationship and marriage. Vel, how escaping with porn, alcohol, or other distractions is actually not the issue, but the symptom of an underlying complication that’s not being addressed.

What You’ll Learn

14:12 Anatomy of Us

Melanie Studley tells how “Anatomy of Us” was born, a project she has with her husband through which they help couples in crisis. Melanie Studley narrates that this idea was born after what she calls the two worst years of their life together. Seth Studley confessed to her that he was watching pornography and she punched him in the face so hard that he got a black eye. They didn’t know how to repair their situation but they did know they didn’t want to divorce. After reading books and listening to many people, they realized that everything was too vanilla so they began through their experience to help other couples.

22:47 Asking for Help

Seth Studley shares from his experience as a marriage therapist for over 15 years, what for him is the most important thing when facing a crisis, and is the part that men do not like to feel vulnerable, they do not like to ask for help or listen to others because they believe that asking for help is a bad thing, that they should be able to do it alone to have that (false) pride of saying “I can handle it all” when in reality, talking and having a support group normalizes the situations or problems in the couple, in the marriage, in the family, and helps you to know that you are not something supernatural but that you are human and that you are not the only one who may be going through a situation like this and that it is okay to talk about it and by listening to others you can also find wisdom.

26:47 Where Therapy Fails

Melanie Studley mentions that many times therapy fails people because they don’t give you enough resources to make changes in your life, she says it’s just going to talk and empty your emotions but coming home with no tools to deal with the problems and more crises continue to originate there. She says that sometimes there is no clarity of what happens if I do something, what is its consequence? That’s why for her and Seth therapy is for healing but coaching is for moving forward.

28:20 Why People Don’t Make Marriage Work

Melanie Studley says that most people don’t work on their marriage because it’s not tangible enough, there’s no way to measure progress if all you do is talk about your emotions. A lot of counseling books have the theory romanticized, but none give guidelines on how to make changes in your life, which is why people go to therapy for many years and still end up divorced.

30:24 What Gets Measured Gets Managed

 Melanie Studley talks about that in a couple what can be measured can be managed, referring that the most common problems expressed in therapy are 3: 1. Not enough communication, 2. Not enough sex and 3. One part doesn’t feel cared or valued.

Knowing this, it is very easy to apply business management methods to a relationship and map out how you will reach those goals, how you will communicate better and through what tools, how many times a week and month you will have sex and how you will make the other person feel valued.

Making a calendar for the relationship does not have a lack of emotion, on the contrary it is systematizing the relationship as you do in other aspects of your life in which you want to excel.

37:40 Planning Sex

Melanie Studley highlights the importance of planning intimate moments with your partner. She draws an analogy about other aspects of your life, asking which is better: an impromptu dinner with your friends where you don’t have a lot of things on hand? or a planned dinner where you have steaks, wine, cheese board, etc?

The same goes for sex, generally women tend to need more time to be ready, that’s why they often reject an unplanned interaction. But if you incorporate it into your life and plan for it, they are already in control of seeing what they need to be ready for.

Making plans means you’ve already thought things through ahead of time and that means you care about them even more.

41:44 Men Vs. Women On Sex

Melanie Studley explains the difference between how a woman and a man think when it comes to sex. With an analogy she says that many times men do things that they think are romantic or show interest, when in reality they are not communicating with their wives, and women, in turn, do not realize that they were doing this to have a moment of intimacy. The men are then left frustrated or feeling unappreciated, and the women are left confused and angry about the situation.

Melanie and Seth Studley’s Links

• Facebook-https://www.facebook.com/anatomyofmarriage/ 
• Instagram-https://www.instagram.com/anatomyofmarriage/?hl=es 
• YouTube-https://www.youtube.com/c/TheStudleys/videos 
• Website-https://anatomyofus.com/ 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/10V35LKAWrWI6geDNvF46X?si=8958ce05a47c418a

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