Earlier this year, I was lying on the grass, headphones in, listening to one of my teachers talk about feeling your full desire.
She mentioned how when we don’t express 100% of our desire to someone, we rob them of the ability to feel 100% of our appreciation.
I thought about how I owed Jordan money.
How I was “supposed” to feel so grateful to him for letting me owe him, but really, I just felt resentful about it.
I hated how every time I made more money, it felt like it immediately disappeared. Moving expenses. Furnishing a new apartment. My business expenses. My pleasure expenses.
Each month, Jordan would pay our rent, and the amount I owed him would go up.
We had a discussion about money monthly.
We were super clear with one another and on the same page – it was never something we fought about.
And still, I resented it.
I judged myself for how much I resented it.
You should be grateful that he’s spotting you, I thought to myself. You should appreciate him more, be more thankful for it.
I laid in the grass, feeling the sun heating up my back.
100% of my true desire, I thought.
And then, suddenly, like the bubbling up of a fountain, it spilled into my conscious awareness.
I want him to forgive me all the money I owe him.
And then, even more quickly, air escaping right before I clamped the lid back on:
I don’t want to pay rent.
Immediately, my self judgement took over.
Lol, you can’t ask for him to pay rent, it said.
Why, just for existing? How entitled are you, anyway? He’s not going to forgive you thousands of dollars. You should just work harder. You’re a spoiled brat.
I tried to negotiate with myself.
Maybe I just want him to forgive me the money I owe, I thought, trying to calm my mind down.
The voice came back in, sounding eerily like the voice of my mother: This is ridiculous. You don’t need to ask him to pay rent.
But I could feel it, in my belly.
That’s not true, my body said. 100% of your desire is for him to pay rent.
My eyes teared up immediately.
Just from feeling the truth. That that was 100% of what I wanted.
How forbidden it felt.
How TRUE it felt.
I walked up to our apartment, visibly shaken. Jordan looked at me, concerned, when I entered.
“What’s wrong?” He asked.
I shook my head; I could barely speak.
“I can’t tell you right now,” I said. “I need to process it.”
***
I sat with it for a few days. Trying to determine if it was a clear desire, trying to make sure it wasn’t coming from a place of fear, playing small, money stuff – trying to poke holes in it any way I could.
But all I kept coming back to, what I could not avoid – is that whether my mind liked it or not (and my mind did NOT), it was still… true.
Once I have clearly realized the truth about anything – a person, place, anything at all – I do not ignore it. Ever.
So later one night, my body shaking, I called Jordan into our bedroom.
I said, “I have a desire I want to share with you.”
“I don’t need it to happen,” I said, “But now that I’ve realized it, I just feel like I have to name it.”
“Okay,” he said, sitting down.
“You’re feeling centered?” I asked.
He nodded.
Some time passed, while I gathered up the courage to say it.
Jordan just watched me.
I took some deep, quivering breaths.
I looked directly into his eyes.
“I want you to forgive me all the money I owe you,” I said, “And I don’t want to pay rent.”
His face did not flinch.
My body turned on.
It felt like it lit up, entirely, from deep inside my pussy. I held his gaze.
I repeated the words in my mind, noticing how delicious, how terrifying it felt, feeling wonder at what was happening in my body.
I started to cry, my body started to shake. I was confused for a moment, then I realized: I was feeling pleasure. I felt it expand, wash through my body. My entire spine was electric. I started laughing, with tears running down my cheeks.
He held my gaze.
I realized I was having an orgasm.
It felt like his eyes hit the inside of my body, my system. Like every part of me was tingly, alive.
Minutes passed. We sat, like that. I cried, I shook, I laughed.
Slowly, it calmed.
After a long time, he said, simply: “Do you want me to respond?”
“I don’t know,” I said, still full of wonder. “You can, but I don’t feel like I need you to.”
“I want to let you have this moment,” he said.
Later that evening, I went down on him.
“Is this how you pay your rent now, little girl?” he said.
I flooded.
***
Two days passed.
We did not mention it.
I sat with the experience of having my desire. Of having named it, owned it, said it aloud.
That had been the important part. I had said it.
I was still amazed by how it felt in my body, by what had occurred within me.
I wondered to myself, he’s not really going to say yes, is he?
He might, though. No, he won’t, no way. But he might.
I felt completely unattached to it. My role was feeling the desire. It didn’t feel like it needed to happen.
It just felt true.
***
Jordan did end up saying yes. At first he said no. At first we sat down to have our regular money talk, and he named some reasons why he didn’t want to pay for those things.
They all culminated in one thing, though: his fear of me leaving him. Basically, he wanted to pay for them… but only later on, only when he was positive we’d be getting married.
It was coming from a place of fear.
This part is super important: I was not attached to what I wanted. At all.
I named to Jordan that it felt like he was speaking from his fear, and not from his truth.
I was not upset.
We were on the same team – trying to find the truth of what would best serve both of us, together.
We took a couple breaks from talking about it, but later that night, Jordan shared some of his desires with me, and owned that he had been coming from fear.
His deepest truth was that he wanted to provide for us in those ways.
The most beautiful thing for me about having Jordan fulfill my desire was being able to see the shift that occurred in him.
It was like energetically, he became bigger, more powerful.
As he stepped into his deeper trust of me and our relationship, he also attracted more toward him. A new client arrived, his business revenue increased.
I think he ended up making the money back that I had owed him – plus a year’s worth of my rent – in the next two weeks.
As someone told me on a podcast a couple months ago: “True desire benefits everyone.”
***
It was absolutely not easy from then on out.
There were huge pieces of growth that came along with this shift, for both of us.
It boiled down to this: I had a REALLY HARD TIME receiving it.
Even though it was my desire, I was still afraid of receiving the desire fully.
At this point, Jordan was (and is still) paying for our rent, our utilities, our internet, our food, our house cleaner, our date nights, our vacations… it was a lot for me to allow myself to accept.
For a couple months, I reacted to having more spaciousness financially by ignoring how much Jordan was providing for me and doubling down, working extra hard – it was like a part of my mind decided that I didn’t really deserve what he was giving me, and since I didn’t deserve it, I needed to drain myself to make up for it.
This made both of us miserable – me because I was exhausted, and Jordan because he was providing but I wasn’t fully receiving what he was providing.
Feminine reception and aliveness is what nourishes the masculine. Jordan’s masculine was holding this incredible container for us, and I was pretending like it didn’t exist.
Another way I was pretending it didn’t exist was by never mentioning it. After my initial joy and thank you, I tried to mention it as little as possible. It was like I still didn’t believe that he really wanted to do it (aka I could not fathom that I could actually have it), so I didn’t want to remind him that he was paying for everything.
Even though he obviously knew. Even though me ignoring it was actually hurting him.
I also didn’t really want to tell anyone.
My “independent woman” conditioning is BIG. It was literally the worst thing I could imagine desiring, to desire a man to provide for me. It goes against everything I was taught.
I told a few close friends, but shied away from mentioning it to anybody else. I was afraid they’d judge me.
Our talk happened in the very end of May.
My true, deep shift into actually receiving it didn’t really happen until August.
Jordan and I had always split food expenses by deciding that he’d pay for the food while I cooked it all. That was fine for me to receive, because it felt even.
But in July, we shifted into Jordan paying for all our food… while we had a personal chef cook and deliver it.
Again, it was totally what I wanted.
And I reacted to it by pushing myself so hard to make so much money in July – and I did – that I promptly wiped myself out for two full weeks. I was miserable, I was exhausted, I didn’t want to get out of bed, and it didn’t make any sense.
Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom of our patterns before we’re done with them, and for me, that was it – it was the moment I was truly like oh, this isn’t working for me. I will not do this any longer.
Even if it meant I didn’t make any money, I was not going to do it by pushing myself like that.
Ever again.
I relaxed, and I opened into Jordan’s container.
The wildest piece is that in August I had by far my highest month in business ever… and then September and October followed suit. So has November, and it’s barely even a week into the month.
It was like I actually allowed myself to fully receive, and that shifted everything. I’ve made more money in the last few months than I made in all of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 combined.
Not by pushing myself. By opening.
But I had to stop resisting it.
It can be really easy to read a story like this and to miss the entire point by focusing on the money.
It was never about the money. It actually has nothing to do with the money.
I have no expectations that Jordan and I will continue this dynamic forever – I expect us to follow what is true for as long as it still feels deeply true to both of us.
It had to do with me feeling my full desire.
And naming it.
Your full desire could be for anything. It’s probably the thing you’ve resisted the most.
Full desire does not come from your mind, from what you think you want. It comes from deep within your body.
Full desire can be tricky because we often chop it off subconsciously before we even are aware that we have it.
We decide that it doesn’t really matter that much, that it’s stupid, that it’s not significant enough or doesn’t match the identity we want to perceive ourselves as having. Before we even allow ourselves to feel it.
We grow up being taught that our desires are wrong, are not allowed.
We suppress them, because we learn that they’re dangerous to have.
But your true desire actually is what leads you on the path to the most wild, vibrant, true life.
True desire does not have to have a reason.
It does not need to be justified. It does not need to be explained.
It just exists, as the truth.
What I’ve found, this year, as I’ve stepped more and more into being able to feel and name my full desire… is that everything is birthed out of that.
If you liked this piece, you might also enjoy:
– 5 Surprising things that can hold you back from getting what you want
– Your belly is supposed to hang down
– My “Doing a Good Job” pattern and how it disappeared