'Love grows cold because you let it': Jackie Lou Blanco shares her one regret about marriage to Ricky Davao
A year and a half after her estranged husband Ricky Davao passed away, Jackie Lou Blanco gave a peek into how their decades-long marriage gradually fizzled out.
Both multi-awarded actors, Blanco and Davao married in 1989. In 2016, Blanco confirmed to entertainment press that they were separated. On May 3, 2025, Davao succumbed to complications related to cancer.
In a tell-all interview on Friday's episode of veteran journalist Luchi Cruz-Valdez's podcast Usapang Real with Luchi, Blanco described herself and Davao as "a couple that didn't really deal with our issues."
"We didn't talk about it," she said.
According to her, they handled their marital issues differently. While Blanco preferred to communicate, often asking Davao, "Paano ba natin puwede ayusin 'to?" she said his way was to stay silent, sometimes giving her the cold shoulder for up to two weeks at a time.
"And I'd keep asking and asking and asking until it got to the point na I didn't ask anymore because I guess it didn't matter anymore," Blanco said. "I just got to the point na parang I didn't wanna try anymore. I guess it drew me farther away."
"He would always explain na, 'If I don't talk to you because I'm upset, that's just the way that I deal with it'," Blanco recalled. "Feeling ko sa kanya...siguro that's the only way he knows how to deal with his pain or with his being upset."
She echoed the advice given by her mother, the late Pilita Corrales, who passed away just a month before Davao did.
According to Blanco, Corrales told her, "Maybe to [Ricky], what he's giving you is 100 [percent] but what you can see is 50...So accept that. Punuin mo na lang..."
They could have gone to a therapist or marriage counselor, Blanco said, but they ultimately didn't.
"We played a big part in not fixing our marriage," she said, adding the one thing she regretted about it all was that they just let themselves drift away from each other.
"Kung meron akong pinagsisihan, 'yun talaga," Blanco said.
"Love grows cold because you let it grow cold, because you don't do anything to bring back the fire," she added. "If in your mind you are committed to making it work, you go through it. And love can be restored."
Point of no return
Blanco said she realized the marriage had reached the end zone when they were still "living in the same house and nothing. We would just sleep in different rooms."
The couple decided to split up. But for years, they continued to stay in the same house, raising their three children together, although both Davao and Blanco eventually got into relationships with other people, said the actress.
Continuing to live in the same house while living separate lives was stressful, especially for their eldest daughter, who had to act as a two-way messenger between her parents when they didn't want to talk to each other, Blanco said.
At one point, their eldest told Blanco, "You know you're in a gray area. You can't be together na, Mom."
The breaking point came one night during an intense fight between Blanco and Davao.
"During that time, I think he was so angry," Blanco recalled. "And he did say like, parang, 'This is my house.' Well, it was his house. Maybe that [was] out of anger."
Blanco found a house three streets away, which made it easy for the kids to shuffle back and forth between their parents' houses.
A place of grace
While the animosity between Davao and Blanco stayed for "a while," they eventually found a meeting point where they could both be civil, even friendly toward each other.
"When you're separated, and the anger goes, or the sadness goes, you kinda wanna make it better; better for both of you, better for the children," Blanco said.
She was the first to extend the so-called olive branch to Davao and his girlfriend then. When Blanco and her kids were planning a family trip to Boracay, she suggested that they invite their dad and his girlfriend, too.
"And they went. But, of course, I didn't realize that it was so awkward for me. Because at the time, Luchi, I was praying for my marriage to be restored if that's what God wanted," Blanco admitted.
She said she was confused by the jealousy she felt when she saw Davao with his girlfriend.
"I think the reason the Lord allowed me to have these feelings is for me to realize that despite what happened, I still loved Ricky as a person and as the father of my children," Blanco said. "I think He just wanted to restore that joy in me...And I guess it was his way of telling me that I needed to forgive myself, as well."
She and Davao even got to work together again on several projects. The most recent one was in the 2022 primetime drama series I Can See You: AlterNate, where they portrayed a married couple.
The safe space endured even after Davao passed away from stage four lymphoma. During Blanco's eulogy at Davao's wake, she thanked two women in particular: Davao's girlfriend, who was Davao's caregiver through his battle, and the woman who was the mother of Davao's youngest child, then 19.
Blanco jokingly called themselves "Aida, Lorna, and Fe," which she lifted from a Marco Sison song of the same title, where the singer is torn between three women.
"Early on, I just found the humor that we were all kinda there for him, and maybe it was kinda okay for me," Blanco said. "More than anything, I was privileged that we got to love the same man at different points in our lives."
