Empty Nest: The Children Are Gone What’s Next?
By: Carol C. Bailey
As a young bride and mom, I used to read a lot of articles on marriage and parenthood. My parents were living in another country and I wanted to be prepared for what lay ahead.
One of the stories that I consumed stayed with me over the years. It was an article that spoke of the statistics of divorce in couples who had been married over thirty years. I do not remember the exact number, only that it was high – higher than I expected. I was young though and my own expectations were rosy.
The important lesson I learned was that it seems as if most of these couples had spent so much time pouring in to their offspring that they had neglected to foster their own relationship. Life was all about school, sports, events and activities centered around the children.
In so doing these couples had drifted from their first love, or even love for each other. So much so that when the children came of age, left the nest and the couples were facing each other they found that they no longer had anything, or any one, in common.
With this lesson in hand, we endeavored to foster our union by continuing to do the things that brought us together in the first place. We also discovered new things and adventures along the way. We employed trusted baby sitters for date nights and when the children were old enough, hired them to take care of each other.
That said, they are adults now and we are not strangers to each other. We have matured over the years and have discovered an interesting freedom in not having kids in school: no PTA meetings, no meeting teachers, no carpool lanes and so much more.