Episode 21 - “Falling In Love vs. Opening To Love – Staying Awake after the First Hot Date” with Francesca Gentille

“Falling In Love vs. Opening To Love – Staying Awake after the First Hot Date” with Francesca Gentille

This program is brought to you by personallifemedia.com. 

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Alissa Kriteman: Welcome to Just for Women: Dating, Relationships, and Sex.  I’m your host, Alissa Kriteman.  This show is dedicated to bringing you today’s top experts in the areas of dating, relationships, sex, love, intimacy, and being empowered.

Francesca Gentille: …I say, “Don’t fall in love.  Open to love”…  We have very little data about this man, and already we’re imagining that we have so much in common…  Nice guys often ask us, “Why are women drawn to jerks?”  And nice women often ask, “Why are guys drawn to bitches?”  …When a man really, really treasures us, he is happy to go slow.  He is happy to have us take our time…  How [icky] in a way, to say, “Well I need a man, to feel that I’m a sexy woman.  I need a man, to feel that I can arouse passion.”  My passion is in me, and it’s something that I bring to a man as a gift…

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Alissa Kriteman: On the show today, I’m excited to speak with Francesca Gentille, relationship expert and empowered woman extraordinaire.  On the show we’re going to discuss ‘falling in love’ versus ‘opening to love’, and how to stay empowered after the first date.  We will explore the different characteristics and ways of being when we are falling in love versus when we are actually opening to love.  We will discuss how we can learn to stay empowered after that first passionate kiss.  Welcome to Just for Women, Francesca.

Francesca Gentille: It’s my delight, Alissa.

Alissa Kriteman: Let me tell the listeners a little bit about who you are.  Francesca Gentille is a nationally recognized relationship coach, and leader for the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists.  She’s co-author of the award-winning book The Marriage of Sex and Spirit.  She’s also a host of Sex, Tantra, and Kama Sutra, which is also on the Personal Life Media Network.  Francesca is a cross-cultural shaman, initiated in four traditions and best known for her ground-breaking work in bringing Tantric principles into flirting and dating, teaching sacred shamanic healing dance to men and women, and using sacred sexuality and soul-retrieval techniques for victims of abuse and addiction.  She’s the proud mother of a son, and met her soul mate at 45.  I love that part.  Currently, she’s writing a book called Priestess of Passion, a magical tale based on her life.  Well, Francesca, that is a lot of amazing depth of insight and background, so I’m very excited to talk to you today about what it looks like when we are falling in love, and what are some of the red flags, or little indicators to us that we might need to slow down in those first initial hot stages of falling in love.  So, let’s start there.  What does it look like when we’re falling in love?

Francesca Gentille: Well, Alissa, I think, sadly for many of us, underneath the glowy high it’s really a mess.  When I speak of the “glowy high”, what I mean is, and we’ve often heard our girlfriends say this, or sometimes we’ve said this, [breathy excited voice] “I’ve met the most wonderful person.  He’s just… You know, we have so much in common.  We love dancing and we like the same books.  We like to go to movies.  And you know, he’s just a very fun person, and he has a great job.” And if you notice the voice, the voice is very… it’s kind of high, or it’s kind of breathy.  If you would be talking to a woman who’s saying things like that in person, she’s going to look very soft.  She’s going to look up when she’s thinking of him.  And this is the stage we… the ‘new relationship’ stage. Sometimes called ‘new relationship energy’ or infatuation, where the body produces a number of chemicals that create a high.  It’s higher than ecstasy, higher than acid, higher than alcohol or cocaine, or any drug that anyone has developed or tried, because drugs work on releasing the brain’s chemicals.  Ands when we have this catalyst of feeling like we’re in love, our body releases a chemical cocktail.  What is does is it literally breaks our ability to think clearly, and that is immediately a red flag, which is why I say, “Don’t fall in love.  Open to love.”

Alissa Kriteman: So you’re talking about just thoughts.  We’re still at the thought process? Have we even kissed him yet?

Francesca Gentille: Well you and I both know that it doesn’t even take the first kiss for women to go there.  It can be just a conversation.  It can be something about the way he looks or the way he smells, or something about his interests or his career.  And suddenly, you know we’re off and running.  Our brain, in Sanskrit, in the Buddhist teaching or the Hindu teaching, is called the “monkey mind” or the “silver fish”, you know because it darts here and there.  Our brain is already into what’s also known as ‘positive fantasy’ or ‘positive projection’.  We have very little data about this man, and already we’re imagining that we have so much in common that I call it the “Chocolate ice cream and sunset stage,” where people are grasping for every little possible thing you have in common with someone, and thinking, “Oh, he and I love chocolate ice cream and walking by the sunset too.”  Hmm, and that’s the brain is off and running.  So when we notice, or notice in our girlfriends, that based on one small piece of data, a date, a conversation, or several small pieces of data, a few dates, a few conversations, that there’s this positive projection into the future of who this person is, and what he’s going to be for us, and how wonderful he is, that we want to invite one another to breathe. [audibly breathes deep].  So literally feel our feet on the floor, relax our bellies, and just envision that our energy, our essence, our focus is coming back into our body.  And I say open a file folder, a mental file folder, when you meet an interesting man.  Open a mental file folder with his name on it, and then imagine that every time you talk to him, you’re just putting a sheet of data into this folder.

Alissa Kriteman: Right.

Francesca Gentille: …And that you’re interviewing for a position in your life, and this position could be like you have a company; the company is you.  I have the company of Francesca Gentille, and you have the company of Alissa Kriteman, and we are interviewing for a position in that company.  It could be ‘life partner’, it could be ‘soul mate’, it could be ‘short-term love relationship’… we’re interviewing for something.  And we don’t want to just take the first person or even the first person who appears with a good resume.  We want to really start gathering data.  And we want to check in, not only with our female friends, we want to check in with our male friends.  I often say that, you’ve heard this, that women and men can be confused… ‘Why are women drawn to guys that are jerks?”  Why does that happen?  And nice guys often ask this, “Why are women drawn to jerks?”  And nice women often ask, “Why are guys drawn to bitches?”  You know, why does that happen?  How does that happen?  Well it happens because, male or female, we’re drawn to vitality and confidence.  And the bitch or the bastard walks into a room with an air of confidence, an air of purposefulness.  They dress with a sense of style and flair, and we’re just drawn to that.  Well, women are going to not see through the façade of a guy who’s a jerk, a user, or a bastard, but another man will.  And men are not going to see through the façade of a woman who’s really, underneath this kind of bravado, is actually a user, is very insecure, is very manipulative.  He’s not going to see through that, but another woman will.  So this is why a really encourage women to have a good-guy buddy, who literally is the ‘wing man’, who we touch base with and say, “What do you think about this guy?”  Because our women friends may easily still be duped by someone, but another guy is going to really see who someone is.

Alissa Kriteman: Got it.  So when we’re falling in love, it’s going to be hard because, like you said, all the chemicals are going to be racing.  We have this innocent heart and we really want to have this person be everything that we’re creating him to be, but we have to really slow down, take a deep breath, and go beneath that initial attraction of vitality and confidence – because of course that’s attractive – to see what’s underneath this man who we are, what Kristin Carter calls “getting into an instant relationship with.”  And women seem as though we have a tendency to just want to get right into a relationship, where men have no problem dating around.  So what are some other things women can do when we’re in this really potent time of falling in love?

Francesca Gentille: Well one of the things is to really begin to remember and believe that when a man finds us precious, when he really treasure us, when we’re not just a conquest, when we’re not just a sexual person to fill a little time with, or a play partner, or… when a man really, really treasure us, he is happy to go slowly; he is happy to have us take our time.  My beautiful, divine beloved, who treats me like a queen, and you know says that I’m his goddess, and just is everything that I ever wanted but didn’t used to have [laughs], you know when I told him I had learned to slow down by the time I met him.  It took me up to when I was 45; hopefully you will go quicker than that.  And when I realized that I needed to really slow down and not fall in love, and really pull myself back when I started to feel that racing heart and that… the endorphins and the phenylalanine and the sense of merging, to actually pull myself back from that and stay grounded, I said to him, “I’m at a point where I need to go slowly.  I want to really get to know you as a person.  I want you to get to know me as a person.  I don’t know if I’m ever going to have sex with you.  I need to build a foundation here.”  And his response was, “Take whatever time you like.”

Alissa Kriteman: Mm hmm.

Francesca Gentille: “Take whatever time you like.”  There was NO pressure, and no energy pressure.  He wasn’t saying, “Take however time you like,” and then being very seductive, and then you know kind of looking at me in those ways or putting his arm around me in those seductive ways or you know sweeping me off my feet.  We don’t want to fall in love, because if we fall there’s no one here to love.  If I’m falling, I’m actually giving my power away.  You talked about empowerment.  I’m giving him too much power… “He’s so wonderful.  He’s so great.  We’re going to have this wonderful life together, and we’re gong to have children together.”  I was talking to a woman just yesterday who, there’s a man who swears at her and he’s on cocaine, and he’ll get very angry with her and he’ll tell her that she’s stupid and he’ll tell her that she’s overly emotional.  And I said, “Why are you still with him?”  And she said, “Well because, you know sometimes when he’s nice to me, we talk about maybe owning a house together someday, and maybe having children together some day.” 

Alissa Kriteman: Mm hmm.

Francesca Gentille: So she’s living in a fantasy future, when in the present she is not being treated with honor and respect.  I’ve rushed into relationships.  My first husband told me later that if I hadn’t slept with him right away, he probably would never have gotten together with me or married me.  And that was a disaster. [laughs]

Alissa Kriteman: Right.

Francesca Gentille: And what kind of pressure is that?  “If you don’t sleep with me first…” And it actually spoke… later I discovered it, that phrase, “If you don’t sleep with me right away,” if a man puts pressure to have sex right away, what that says is that he was very insecure.  He was very insecure and wounded about his sexuality.  Later in the marriage he asked for an open relationship, because he said that when we were together, he said that when he was a young man in his teens he’d been rejected by women.  It didn’t feel like he had an opportunity to explore sexually when he was a teenager.  And now that we were married, and he was in his thirties, he was recognizing that he still felt unfulfilled as a man.  And I said, “Well how many women do you need to sleep with to feel fulfilled?  Five? Ten? Fifty?  Five hundred?  Don’t you think that maybe the issue is actually inside you and inside your spirit, and it’s not going to be satisfied with a number of women?”  But at the time I’d given my power away to him.  I was dreaming of the fantasy of our marriage and someday a house and children, and I stayed with him while he would go out and have sex with other women, and I would needlepoint by the phone at home.  I was just crying and feeling so, so scared and upset.  And I was colluding in a sense in my own emotional abuse in that relationship.  I was supporting him to abuse me.  I mean, he wasn’t trying to abuse me.  That wasn’t… his intention was not to hurt me.  His intention was to fulfill himself.

Alissa Kriteman: Wow, interesting.

Francesca Gentille: …While I supported him in that, in abusing me.

Alissa Kriteman: This is amazing.  So what you’re saying is that there are ways… you know this woman clearly… there has to be a point where we love ourselves enough, when we are being shown by our partner or the person we’re dating, of clear indications that we are not being honored, and yet there’s this propensity to stay in the relationship, and we just have to stay conscious, especially through these little subtle hints.  I mean, your examples are pretty intense, with this woman where the man speaks to her in a derogatory way, but there’s also those subtle little hints, where a man says he’s not willing to wait, if you don’t have sex with him right away, he’s not willing to wait.  That has actually happened to me in my life, and I look back now and I think, “Wow, that was actually a red flag.”  If I had said, “You know what? I’m at a point in my life where I don’t want to have sex right away.  I’m thinking anywhere form a month to two months.  Is that all right with you?”  And if he walks away, then he walks away.  So what are some things we can do as women to stay empowered and stay conscious to those subtle hints, or not-so-subtle hints?

Francesca Gentille: Well one of these is listening to these kinds of conversations and recognizing that there are red flags, and there also are sort of like ‘golden flags’.  And to do our own research in life.  I mean, if you don’t want to take my word for it, it’s fine.  Go out and interview women who have the kind of relationship that you dream of having.  Don’t just interview women who have relationships, or who have long-term relationships.  Go out and find women who, when you look at her with her partner, you think, “That’s the way I want to be treated by a man.  And that’s the kind of love that I want to have for my partner and the trust that I want to have for my partner.”  I call that “interviewing women who are in the graceful intimate soul mate relationship.”  And when I did that, when I stared interviewing these women, what I heard over and over again was that on the road to “finding a soul mate”, they became a soul mate.  They stopped searching.  Many women, we’re searching, we’re going, “Oh, now we’re going to go to a bar; now we’re going to go to a party.  Now I’m going to go to Burning Man because I hope to find some guy.  You know, I ant to find this guy who’s going to make me happy and fulfill my dreams.”  And what I hear from women in soul mate relationships is they say that they got to a point, and you said it, Alissa, where they were willing to be without a relationship, in fact would prefer to be without a relationship than to be in the wrong relationship, where they finally were standing firmly on their own standards and valuing themselves.  And I heard that from every single woman that I had interviewed about, who had a divine soul mate relationship.  She became willing to not have a relationship.  And I was one of those girls who… I spent negative fifteen (-15) minutes between relationships.  While one was kind of winding down and I was coming off the drugs of my high of new love… it usually took me, you know about six months to eighteen months to start coming off my own internal chemistry and if… You, who are listening to this, notice your own pattern in relationships.  Notice, do they often end in six months, or nine months, or three weeks, or a year?  That’s your body chemistry, when it’s coming off of drugs.  And you know suddenly you come out of the clouds and it’s not the right relationship.  Well as I was coming out of those clouds, I would start, sometimes suddenly, sometimes not so suddenly, intriguing to build a new relationship, so that by the time I ended one, I was actually already starting another one. 

Alissa Kriteman: Hmmm.

Francesca Gentille: And I didn’t… you know it took me a long time to recognize this pattern of just not ever being able to be alone.  And first I just had compassion for it.  Okay, I’m afraid… it didn’t even come up as “afraid”; it was “normal”; it was like normal for me to always… and I was proud of it for awhile, like, “Ooh, I’m so sexy.  I’m so dishy.  I’m always in a relationship.”  But it was interviewing these women in soul mate relationships that really started to see that there was something obsessive, something compulsive, something driven about the way that I would move from one relationship to the next, seeking the next high, the next feeling of being in love, that was going to make everything better in my life.

Alissa Kriteman: I love it, ‘be willing to not have a relationship at all’, and really recognizing our patterns.  Great, great stuff.  We’re going to take a break to support our sponsors.  This is Alissa Kriteman, your host of Just for Women: Dating, Relationships, and Sex.  I’m talking with Francesca Gentille.  Am I saying your last name correctly?

Francesca Gentille: Gentille (jen-tee’-lay).

Alissa Kriteman: Gentille!  Oh, fantastic relationship expert!  And we will be right back.  Stay tuned.

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Alissa Kriteman: We’re back.  I’m your host Alissa Kriteman.  You’re listening to Just for Women: Dating, Relationships, and Sex.  We’re speaking today with Francesca Gentille, amazing empowered woman, free spirit, amazing heart, and we’re talking about the difference between ‘falling in love’ and ‘opening to love’.  And in our first segment we got the real skinny on what it looks like to fall in love, and some of the red flags therein.  And now we’re going to talk about opening to love, and how different it is when we are opening to love.  And so, Francesca, tell us what the major differences are, when we know we’ve sort of gone beyond the fall, and are really grounded and opening.

Francesca Gentille: Well, I just want to say one more thing about the ‘falling’ not falling is ways to slow down are literally breathing, and literally not kissing, not even going past the kissing.  Because, I’ll tell you why, is that there are very powerful pheromones right above the lip and below the nose, and as we passionately kiss someone we start to trigger these pheromones that go right back to our reptilian brain at the back of the neck which is “fight, flight, freeze, or fuck”, and we start really wanting this man and wanting to connect with him.  This is one of the reasons that I think intuitively prostitutes don’t French kiss their clients.  So just to be aware that even kissing itself can lead us down a road to falling in love with someone we don’t know, and may not truly have the kinds of things, the core values, that allow for a beautiful long-term relationship.

So, ‘opening to love’… Opening to love is actually ultimately more delicious.  Falling in love is a high, which is delicious in the moment.  It can show something that’s possible.  But when we come off the drugs we’re going to have to do work.  And often when we come off those drugs, this person isn’t the person that this rosy glow had us believe.  And we’re not the person that they thought we were, either.  When we take our time and open to love, we really start to feel, in a grounded way, “This is an amazing man, truly.  And this is someone who I trust.  And this is someone who I respect.  And there is attraction here.  And I have choice.  I am empowered in myself.  My passion is mine.  It’s I don’t need a man to feel passionate, to feel aroused, to be sexy.  You know, it’s in my body.  I mean, how [icky] in a way to say, “Well, I need a man, to feel that I’m a sexy woman.  I need a man, to feel that I can be aroused and passionate.  My passion is something that I bring to a man, as a gift.

Alissa Kriteman: Mmm, I like that.  I like the ‘bringing it’ versus needing to have that fulfilled by someone else.

Francesca Gentille: And this is… if you study ancient traditions of Tantra and of sacred sexuality around the world, what you discover is that women were meant to be the sexual well of passion and energy.  Women were actually meant to be the initiators, not into just sex, like, “Hey, baby, want to do it?” but the initiators into divine sexuality, the initiators into that transcendent sexuality, where the world just blends, and I’m one with my partner and he’s one with me.  And for some of us, who are dancers, there’s a point where we’re dancing, where we’re no longer dancing… we’re ‘being danced’.  For some people in sports, it’s ‘the zone’.  Well there’s a place in sexuality, which is “I’m no longer ‘making love’ or ‘having sex’… I am this flow of energy dancing in between my partner and me.  And we’re healing each other.”  I mean, it’s just an amazing thing.  And women were meant to be the carriers and the providers of that.  And this whole thing where a man is supposed to turn us on, get us wet, you know, bring us our own passion and arousal, is just messed up. [laughs]

Alissa Kriteman: Yeah, well, you’re really talking about something vastly different here from what I think is going on in mainstream sexual activity.  You’re talking about invoking and re-igniting a sort of, like you said, ‘sacred sexuality’ that we are the initiators and bringers of.  So it would behoove us to learn about what this is.

Francesca Gentille: You know, I’ll just tell you, when you develop this in yourself, you become the lover a man never, ever forgets.  Ever.

Alissa Kriteman: Tell me about that.  How do we become this lover a man never forgets?

Francesca Gentille: Well, men… they like the smorgasbord of women.  They like tall, short, voluptuous, slender...  You know sometimes there’s breast men or leg men or whatever, but in general, men like women.  And they let… you know, from their more primal nature, they like the sense of variety.  They like the sense of the hunt, and all that kind of stuff.  Well that’s what we get when men are in their primal nature.  But, men are not just primal [species], in the reptilian brain.  Men are also divine spirit.  And when a woman can bring that force in a man, and bring him to those places of transcendence, that’s when he feels seen, he feels heard, he feels met in a way that not every woman can do.  Not every woman currently can do it.  Hopefully, each of us can learn to do that.  So how do we start?  I would definitely encourage women to read the kind of books that empower them about being the source of passion: Layne Redmond’s When the Drummers Were Women, Starhawk’s book Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics, Jalaja Bonheim’s Aphrodite’s Daughters.  Really start to get into our bodies… “Ooh, I am this divine feminine source.  My vulva is the sacred well of feeling and life itself.  And when I come into the bedroom, I am the priestess of love.  I am the shaman of the sacred sexual, or whatever term really inspires us.  I am that which can heal and ignite a man.  And it takes something for women to shift from, “Oh, my crack, my ‘cootchie’, my ‘down there’, this thing that smells and stinks and is accursed once a month.”  It takes something to shift out of that.  But I think reading really helps.  I think that some videos… Dangerous Beauty is one of my favorite films that kind of shows the empowerment process for a woman in her own love.  It’s a little bit too… in what I’m teaching, it’s a little bit too much about being ‘in love’.  But on the other hand it shows her coming into her own erotic power.

Alissa Kriteman: Right.

Francesca Gentille: …And being able to bring that to men in a way that empowers them and heals them and has her be the highest-paid courtesan in Venice, of the 16th century.  And we each have that power in us, and she in a way intuitively brought a sense of the sacred into what she was doing.  So I really encourage women to start doing the research, viewing the films, and taking the classes that bring them home to their own sexuality and their own sacred sexuality.

Alissa Kriteman: Nice, and there’s a lot of classes especially.  We are so lucky to be in the Bay Area and surrounded by this kind of amazing work.  Okay, great.  So what else does it look like when we are opening?  We’re grounded; we’re trusting…  It sounds like we have not lost our sense of our own center.  But yet, when we get into a relationship, that is the number one thing women report that they struggle with, is maintaining that sense of themselves.  So do you have any advice for us, when we’re in the middle of the flood, we’re having sex on a regular basis.  Maybe we are tapped into our divine feminine already, and that’s even more energy that’s going on between us.  What are one or two things we can do to maintain that sense of empowerment on our own?

Francesca Gentille: One of the things, as I said before, is to interview women who are in divine soul mate relationships, because you’ll hear them talk about trust and respecting a man. And I often say, and I’ve said this to my beloved: It’s not that I love him more than I love anyone else, because my love is in me and I’m a loving person.  It’s not that I’m attracted to him more than I am attracted to anyone else I’ve ever been with.  I’m a passionate person.  My attraction lives in me.  But I trust him more.  I respect him more.  I share common values with him more.  And I feel seen and heard, and like I matter to him more than I’ve ever felt with anyone else.  And I keep my own life, and you’ll hear this when you interview women with divine soul mate relationships.  They keep their own life.  They still have their own friends; they have their own activities.  There was a book a few years back called The Rules, which talks about what you do to be the woman that’s unique and above all others, the woman that a man wants to marry.  What do you do to become that?  And the book was actually a very manipulative book.  It said, oh, you know, don’t call him, and you know, do this, do that… And I looked at the book, and the book was actually given to me by a boyfriend at the time, who felt that I was too clingy.  And he was trying to give me a message, so I read the book and I thought, “This is icky.  This is really disgusting manipulative stuff.”  But if there was something in there that was a good message, if there was a way to do this in a good way, what would that be?  And I thought, “Well, it’s having a life.  It’s having a life and sticking to it.”  In The Rules you pretend to have a life.  Like when he calls you pretend that you’re busy and you’re not going to call him back.  When he’s going somewhere, you pretend that you’re going to be going somewhere else, so that he’s nervous about where you’re going.  It’s all pretend and manipulation.  And I thought, “Well, why don’t you actually have a life?”

Alissa Kriteman: Exactly.

Francesca Gentille: “Why don’t, instead of pretending you have somewhere else to go, why don’t you have somewhere else to go?”

Alissa Kriteman: Exactly.

Francesca Gentille: Instead of pretending that you’re busy, and therefore you’re not going to call him, why don’t you be a busy person who’s in love with her own life?  Because that’s what a man is… remember vitality and confidence?  That’s what a man is going to be really attracted to, when a woman is following her soul purpose, when she’s lit up about her life.  You know the warning sign is when you start giving away your life to be with a man.

Alissa Kriteman: Yeah.

Francesca Gentille: And staying grounded in love… I’m going to breathe again… you’ll feel the feet on the floor come back.  You have to say, “Oh, a warning sign is when I start thinking, ‘He needs to spend more time with me, spend more time with me… what can I do to get more attention or energy or time from him?’  That’s a sign to me, ‘Oh, I haven’t talked to Alissa lately.  Let me give Alissa a call and let’s go out and have lunch.  Or get our nails done.  Or get a massage together.’”

Alissa Kriteman: Yeah, speaking to your women friends… and I love what you’re saying.  You’re saying, “Have an authentic vitality and confidence, and don’t lose that.  I’ve heard that many times, in people that I’ve interviewed.  It’s time for us, as women, to really do the work, and you know not in a hard-edged anxious way, but really allowing ourselves to live the authentic lives that we are here to live.  And if these men fall away and they want something else, well then they’re not the man for us.  And we have to find partners that are true partners, who really do honor our authentic self-expression.  And I love, love, love what you’re saying, and appreciate your time with us today, to tell us the signs of falling in love, versus opening to love.  And I really appreciate the work that you’re doing.  Tell us where we can find you, Francesca.

Francesca Gentille: You can find me at Personal Life Media. [laughs]

Alissa Kriteman: Yeah.

Francesca Gentille: And my show is Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra.  But in that show I mostly interview other people.  You can also find me at www.LifeDanceCenter.com.  That’s my own personal web site; and my e-group, Sacred Living, at YahooGroups.com is where I post events that are up-and-coming, and essays like this, about life, about relationships.

Alissa Kriteman: And do you do private coaching as well?  Groups?  What kind of work do you do with individuals?

Francesca Gentille: I do.  I do private coaching for individuals and couples.  I think some of the richest times to work is when we’re, whether we’re in a relationship or not, but we recognize, “I want to come into my divine feminine.  I want to know what my soul’s purpose is.  I really want to have a life that I can stay grounded in.”  And that’s... a lot of the work that I do is really helping women discover what is their soul calling, what is their life passion, what is their connection to their own divine feminine.  And then coaching couples as well, teaching them a lot of how to bring the sacred into their relationship, sacred communication, sacred touch, and by “sacred” we’re talking ‘tender’, we’re talking ‘expansive’, we’re talking ‘magical’ and just…  You know some people don’t like the word ‘sacred’, so really ‘delicious’ on a whole other level.  And then I teach workshops in various centers around Northern California, but I do travel, so if people want to host me in their living room or in their center, where they live, with a minimum number of people, I’m happy to fly or drive to where they are and create something wonderful. 

Alissa Kriteman: Excellent.  Oh, thank you so much for being on Just for Women today.  We are out of time.  And listeners, I want to let you know that you can email me at [email protected].  Please, give us your comments.  Let us know what you like, what you want to hear more about.  And for text and transcripts of the show and other shows on Personal Life Media, you can visit our website at www.PersonalLifeMedia.com.   Francesca, you are a gem.  Thank you so much for all the amazing empowering work you do with women, and men.  And again, listeners, check out Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra another show on the network, and we will see you next time.  Thank you, Francesca, for being with us.

Francesca Gentille: My pleasure.

Alissa Kriteman: I’m your host, Alissa Kriteman, always expanding your choices here on Just for Women: Dating, Relationships, and Sex.  See you next time.

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