My wife got me an XD .45 Compact for my birthday a couple years ago. It is a very very nice piece. It's getting to be winter around here so I will be able to start wearing coats again (hee hee).
The kick of this weapon is noticable different from the Glocks. Two friends of mine went to the range about 6 months ago. We compared my XD against a Glock .40 and a Glock 9mm. The XD .45 had less kick than the .40 and just a little more kick than the 9mm. We were all surprised.
That's actually probably due more to the caliber than the platform. The recoil pulse from a .40 is generally described as a sharp, hard kick, very snappy. A .45ACP is often described as more of a push recoil. 9mm can be snappy if it's shot out of a light platform like a Kahr 9mm, but in most reasonably sized platforms or platforms with recoil reducing technology like two-stage springs (glock 26), flat springs with buffers (hk usp c), compensators (pretty much any platform you can convince a gunsmith to screw up) it's extremely manageable compared to the .40. Anyway, I suspect you already knew this, but I wrote it for the woman who started the thread as more evidence of why she shouldn't be worried about trying a .45.