Healing the Relationship to the Feminine and Receive Life Fully

What I Now Have Embodied after my 7-Year Relationship Ended

Listening to the Body, Pleasure and Speaking Your Deepest Desires

Written fully by myself, Katherine Franco. No AI included….unfortunate i have to say that these days. 

Being married and in a long-term relationship for 7 years was beautiful. And also knowing what I know now, I understand so deeply why it ended and what I would have done to save it now.

My main takeaways around this are learning how to make a decision from the get go.

As I was deciding if I wanted to marry my husband at the time, I made a pros and cons list (I’m embarrassed to say it but it’s true!). And although the pros list outweighed the cons list, my body was in so much resistance. He was perfect on paper but my body said no.

Even the day of my wedding, God bless my 23 year old self, I had so much resistance and terrified but in my mind I said, “This is just what you gotta do in life!” And moved forward. 

I allowed my mind to make the decision, instead of my body.

What I know now before making any big decision in my life whether it’s around a career shift or a new relationship or creating more wealth is to,

Feel into it in your body, your softness, if there is resistance, it’s not in alignment, if there is ease, then it is in alignment.

I also like to call this tuning into the feminine.

The feminine feels soft. It’s open. It’s receptive. 
The masculine gets it done. Makes it happen. 

So when I make a decision it’s important for me to tune into my feminine, my heart, my body and feel into it.

If there is openness and softness, it feels aligned. 
If there is any rigidness, then it’s not for me.

But it’s so easy to listen to the mind and come up with a million reasons why it should be aligned! Don’t listen to the mind.

Take a breath. Tune in. Listen.

Another beautiful lesson I learned after my 7-year relationship ended is the power of tuning into my pleasure through food, sex and the mundane moments of life, like nature. 

Throughout my marriage, sex was so painful and I had so much stored trauma in my pelvic floor that it wasn’t fun. I held so much tension in my body and so much shame around my sexual desires and it’s sad to think about but my mind ruled my life instead of my body.

I grew up in a Christian home where sex was taught to be saved for marriage. And I listened to my parents and that’s exactly what I did. I would have so much shame masturbating as a teenager and it carried with me all through adulthood. 

When I was married, I went to the doctor to ask them why sex hurts so badly and they couldn't answer my questions and just gave me a medical dildo and I would feel so shameful to even allow it to touch it near me. I would freak out in embarrassment the same way as a child and it carried with me.

Near the end of my marriage, as I decided to start exploring what it means to feel aroused, I really thought I was gay because I didn’t feel any sexual attraction towards my husband at the time and only could feel aroused when I was with women.
But the truth is that I still just had no connection to my body. I felt only emotionally connected towards women because of the ease of the heart connection I had with women.

At the end of my marriage, I left because I thought I was gay but really I was just so confused sexually and I didn’t want to open up the marriage because that felt like a recipe for disaster.

So after I left, I began to explore my sexuality for the first time in my life at age 27 and I learned A LOT. From tantra to self-pleasure work, I love talking about this. 

What I did learn was the beginning of learning how to truly listen to my body and feel safe in my body.

And that was a slow gradual experience.

After that 7-year relationship ended, a year later I explored a lovership with a sweet kind man for the first time. We spent a week together fully in nature traveling in his van. There was no penetration at all the whole time but fully just embraced me and we explored our sensuality together through snuggling and kissing and it was so awakening for me because it was the first time I truly felt so held through my slowness around my relationship to pleasure. I felt so safe.

Over the course of the next 6 years, I went deep into learning tantra and how to experience deeper pleasure with or without a partner to bring more aliveness and pleasure into your everyday life. 

And this is a practice I deeply adore. I can’t believe the woman I am today! Someone that isn’t a master at this but has dove deep into orgasmic practices and I experience such profound pleasure in and out of the bedroom.

Because I love sharing about this, one of the subtle ways I love to tune into my pleasure practice is to eat my meail without any electronics. No phones, no computer, no watching youtube or podcast but I take each bite of my meal I prepared with a deep breath and devouring each bite.

There is such beauty to this experience because it allows you to be present with the experience of life and it feels so juicy to create this way. It’s inspiring.

The last thing I wish I knew before my marriage ended was to tap into my deepest desires and communicate them.

This is a tricky one because it forces us to be vulnerable and instead of criticizing our partner. It also means learning how to fully receive your desire.

So instead of criticizing your partner of “I wish you cooked and cleaned more!”

Ask for your desires speaking from the heart, not the mind.

The hard truth that we don’t realize is that men want to fulfill our desires.

When we ask from the heart, it hits a lot differently than from the mind.

And when he does ask for what you desire, fully receive it. Like fully in gratitude and be like wow damn that was hot.