Background story: My 40 year old wife of 18 years dropped the ILYBINILWY bomb about 6 months ago. She told me she still moves me but has no passion or sexual feelings for me anymore. Wants out of out relationship and blames me for everything. Many classic MLC symptoms. Further, she is having "romantic" feelings for an old HS boyfriend and has reached out to him with phone and texts, but she swears he doesn't return her feelings. She claims it is all a fantasy in her head, and although they call quite a bit I do not think they have started a physical affair.
For the first few months I did all the wrong things where I tried to smother her, buy her stuff, be romantic, tell her I loved her, call her a million times a day, monitor her cell phone calls, etc. On the advice of this board and others I started trying to detach a few weeks ago and I have been doing quite well I think. I let he have all the space she needs, have dropped the cell phone monitoring, stopped pursuing her.
My question is, this weekend we are going on a weekend trip we scheduled 6 months ago. This is to an all-inclusive resort in Domincan Republic, and no kids. This was originally intended to be a romantic getaway, but with everything going on we are both nervous about it. Since we can't get our money back we have decided to go, not talk about "us" at all, not take any self-help books, just enjoy each others company. We have not talked about sex on this trip at all (we haven't had any intimate contact for about a month). My question to the board, since we will be so far removed from our normal reality and in a very romantic spot, do I suspend the DB tactics and try to woo her? Should I try to initiate sex if the opportunity arises? Should I tell her I love her? Or should I continue DB tactics and keep myself detached. I feel this is such a rare and unusal opporunity that I want advice. Also, on a final topic, in the last few weeks, since I have started the DB tactics, she has told me she loves me a few times. How do I respond? Thanks!!!!
