I've been lurking around this board since January. After reading DR and many posts from so many courageous people, I've decided to join in and while my sitch is going OK, I got plenty of work to do yet.

Quick rundown, Me41, W39, D13, S10, M19 years, Separated 8 months now. W was your classic WAW even though I asked her to leave the family home. W took the kids and set themselves up a IL's house.

Come last December & January, we had a torrid legal time and stupid me (before DBing) took the "agree with them" too literally when all she wanted to do was to dispose and divide all of our assets. W never asked for D but was hellbent on a controlled separation. It all ended up with an atty's threat for me to vacate the family home so I ended up in a nice apt, found this board, picked up DB and have been working on myself ever since.

I'd visit the children at our home and they'd be with me at the apt every 2nd weekend. For 6 weeks, it appears I did a pretty good job at DBing. Changed my ways, lost 50lbs in total, new wardrobe, new look and more 180's than you'd see a skateboarding exhibition. The upshot of this, W jumped me one night after we put the kids to bed and told me that she was so attracted to me that she couldn't control herself. W told me that even though we were separated, we could carry on a physical relationship. Not having sex for so long, I agreed though I was uncomfortable about this physical only thing because my ultimate goal was to have a loving, growing and nuturing relationship with her.

Our sex life for the 19 years was predictable, once a month, her on top, missionary and it was all over. I tried to add variety into it and she never responded and prefered the old groove. I accepted this even though I fantasized of a more adventureous sex life between us and because I love her so much, factored this predictability into my ultimate goal.

After the first encounter, W sends me a text message to do it again. I was a little down about this "physical only" thing until I read page 292 of Michele's book DR which gave me the wisdom to keep going. I also picked up off the board the Dr Dobson idea were intimacy follows an interval of antagonism, in our case the antagonism was extreme. At first, I looked into her eyes and all I saw was a dead glaze. However, after a months of this, averaging 4 times a week at 3 hours per session, her eyes came to life and W started refering to these times as lovemaking and intimacy, not just sex.

I bought myself some great books on how to be a better lover and improved my style, experimented a little and W has reciprocated very well. While the kids were interstate with my parents, W stayed the night at my apt before we left for a long weekend vacation together. She liked my apt, it has the basics but I never put pictures on the wall and stuff like that because that is a direction I don't want to move on too far down. It's a temporary home and I think W picked up on that.

Our whole R has turned around. What was at first a physical thing turned into a highly emotional thing. I have back slid over the last 2 weeks because my hurt feelings that I have been suppressing for so long, started to surface but I have hammered them back down as I know they will be resolved in time. Last week, she called off her legal hounds as the family home is the last thing to go. We still need to have R talks but I won't initiate them. All I'm concentrating on is being best friends and lovers, hoping that everything else will fall into place. BTW, there are no OP's involved since we first met.

The reason I posted here is twofold. I wanted to share my story with folks out there who have a low desire spouse. My W behaves like a moderate to high desire spouse and I attribute this most to the exterior changes that I've made. Muscles, new hairstyle, cologne, macho-gay fashion and new intimacy skills.

The second reason is to get your advice on where I should be starting my thread? My goals are to continue being best friends and lovers but I know I got complacent and ended up backsliding so I'm taking stock now and have realised the need to journalize. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks for reading this. Suit

"It's better to have no spouse than have a bad spouse"