Related: Empty Nester 101: Your Kids Have Launched, Now What? | How Do You Respond to Your Partner’s Bid for Connection?
For years, decades even, so much of your life together revolved around raising children. There were school drop-offs, practices, homework, birthday parties, doctor’s appointments, family dinners, vacations, the “teenage years,” college applications, and countless ordinary moments you probably didn’t realize you’d miss until they were over.
And then, seemingly all at once, your routine has come to a halt, and your empty nest feels very, very quiet.
When your children leave home, people often focus on the question:
What are we going to do now?
Travel. Pickleball. Date nights. New hobbies. More time with friends. Maybe finally tackle that list of house projects?
Those things can be wonderful and exciting. But before you get busy with your next thing, first ask yourself this very important question:
“What did we just experience together?”
Empty nesters: Reflect before you rush into your next chapter
Raising children is one of the longest chapters many couples will share. You’ve heard the phrase, “The days are long but the years are short.” Every day, you are exhausted, frantically managing one thing after another, but looking back over the years, time has flown by.
And like any major transition, the end of that chapter can bring more than one emotion at the same time:
- You can feel incredibly proud of your children and miss having them down the hall.
- You can love being a parent and feel relieved that someone no longer needs you quite so much.
- You can look back on those years feeling gratitude while also mourning how much you sacrificed.
When you ask yourself and your partner, “What did we just experience?” you may discover that you and your partner experienced those years very differently. That is okay.
For instance, every year my husband and I drop off our daughter on her first day of school. And every year without fail, I cry. My husband doesn’t. We both care deeply, but we handle letting our child go into the world without us differently.
Neither response is right or wrong. They’re just different ways of holding love, worry, pride, and letting go.
Whether you are dropping off your new kindergartner or college-aged child, instead of immediately asking, “What’s next?” spend some time looking backward together first.
Look back at the family you built
Think about all that happened between those first days of parenthood and where you are now. What were some of your favorite memories? What did you do really well together? What will you miss? What absolutely won’t you miss?
And perhaps most importantly: How did raising your children change each of you?
Don’t compare answers or decide whose experience was harder. Get curious. You may know your partner as a parent incredibly well and still discover things about their experience you’ve never heard before.
Talk about what you put on hold
Parenthood requires sacrifice. Sometimes those sacrifices are practical: sleep, money, travel, career opportunities, or time with friends. Others might not be as obvious, but you paused them because of parenting.
Maybe one of you stopped painting. Playing music. Going hiking. Taking classes. Seeing friends. Exercising. Volunteering. Going away for weekends.
Maybe there was a version of yourself who slowly moved farther into the background because somebody needed to make dinner, get to soccer practice, or stay home with a sick child.
And those sacrifices may not have been equal.
Research consistently finds that mothers are more likely than fathers to make significant adjustments to their careers in order to care for their families. A Pew Research Center analysis found that 42% of mothers, compared with 28% of fathers, reduced their work hours to care for a child or family member, and 39% of mothers, compared with 24% of fathers, took a significant amount of time off from work. Mothers were nearly three times as likely as fathers to report having quit a job for family reasons (27% vs. 10%).
Other research has described how, even in dual-career households, mothers can become the “default parent” — not necessarily because a couple sat down and consciously decided that one person’s career, time, or goals mattered more, but because a series of seemingly practical decisions accumulated over the years.
That doesn’t mean those sacrifices were unwanted or regretted. In fact, most parents in the Pew research said they were glad they had made them. But it does mean that as children become more independent, couples have an opportunity to revisit something they may not have talked about in a very long time:
What did each of us put aside to build this family—and what deserves some space now?
The impact of accepting influence
In Gottman Method Couples Therapy, we talk about the importance of accepting influence. It means being willing to take your partner’s feelings, needs, opinions, and perspective into consideration when making decisions, even when you don’t automatically agree with them.
Dr. John Gottman’s research found that marriages were happier and more stable when husbands accepted influence from their wives rather than resisting power-sharing and collaborative decision-making. Although the original research examined heterosexual couples and particularly men’s acceptance of women’s influence, the principle applies much more broadly: healthy relationships need influence to move in both directions.
Accepting influence helps move a couple away from “me versus you” and toward “we.” Instead of defending your own position or competing over whose needs should come first, you become curious about your partner’s experience. That reduces power struggles and creates the possibility for both partners to feel understood — an essential part of a happy, healthy relationship.
For years, decisions may have started with: What do the kids need? Now you have an opportunity to ask: What do you need? What do I need? And how can the life we build next make room for both?
This might mean rediscovering something you gave up years ago, pursuing something entirely new, or simply having more time to figure out what you want. And your partner’s answer may be completely different from yours.
Part of this next stage may be discovering who you are individually, as well as who you are together — not everything has to become a shared activity.
Turn toward “us” by making a bid for connection
Once you’ve spent some time honoring where you’ve been and considering what each of you wants individually, it’s time to turn toward each other again.
In Gottman Method Couples Therapy, we call the little attempts we make to get our partner’s attention or engagement bids for connection. In Dr. John Gottman’s research with newlyweds, couples who were still married six years later had turned toward one another’s bids for connection 86% of the time. Couples who eventually divorced had turned toward those bids only 33% of the time.
Each time you turn toward your partner’s bid, you are essentially sending the message: I notice you and I’m interested in you. You matter to me. By turning towards, you make small deposits into what Gottman calls your Emotional Bank Account. Over time, those deposits build friendship, trust, and a sense that you can reach for one another and expect your partner to respond.
And this can become especially important as your children become more independent.
For years, many of your everyday interactions may have revolved around your children:
- “What time is practice?”
- “Can you pick her up?”
- “Did you hear what happened at school?”
- “Come see what he just did!”
Suddenly, you may have fewer practices, carpools, school events, and reasons to constantly communicate. That creates an opportunity to make different kinds of bids.
- “Want to get coffee with me?”
- “Remember when we used to…?”
- “What would be fun for us to do this weekend?”
- “I’ve always wanted to try this. Would you do it with me?”
And perhaps one of the most meaningful bids you can make during this transition is simply: “What have you missed about us?”
Then turn toward your partner’s answer.
One partner may envision passports and plane tickets while the other is dreaming about Saturday mornings at home, coffee on the patio and nowhere they need to be. There isn’t one right answer. Listen with curiosity. You are learning about your partner again.
You are also beginning to fantasize about the possibilities together and inviting play back into your lives as a couple.
The goal isn’t to create one perfectly shared vision. It’s to keep reaching for one another — and responding when your partner reaches back.
How to start the empty nest conversation with your partner
I’ve seen this transition play out very differently between partners. For one partner, life can initially feel like “business as usual.” They get up, go to work, come home, and much of their daily routine continues as it did before the kids left.
For the partner who spent years more intimately involved in the day-to-day lives of the children: managing schedules, keeping track of what everyone needed, being the person the kids came to, and carrying much of the mental load, the transition can feel much more significant. Suddenly, not only is the house quieter, but a role that occupied an enormous amount of their time, energy, and identity has changed. One is now faced with, “What is my purpose in life? How am I going to fill my day?”
Neither partner is experiencing the transition incorrectly. But if they don’t talk about it, that difference can easily be misunderstood as distance, lack of empathy, or dissatisfaction with the relationship.
Knowing you should talk about this and knowing how to start the conversation are two different things.
That’s why we’ve created the “Now What About Us?” Couples Worksheet to help you slow down and have this conversation together.
You’ll look back at the family you built, explore what each of you may want to rediscover, practice accepting influence by making room for your partner’s dreams, reconnect with the “us” in your relationship, and imagine what you want this next chapter to look like.
Set aside about 30–45 minutes per section, put your phones away, and do it together.
You spent years building a family together.
Now you get to be curious about the two people who built it — and what they’d like to build next.
FAQ: Talking to your partner about the empty nest transition
How long does it usually take a couple to adjust to becoming empty nesters?
There’s no fixed timeline, and truly everyone is different. It often depends on how connected you and your partner stayed to each other during the parenting years. Couples who kept turning toward each other’s bids all along often find the adjustment lighter. Couples who let their relationship run deprioritized in the background may need more deliberate time and conversation to rebuild that connection — which is normal, not a sign anything is wrong.
What if my partner doesn’t feel the same way I do about our kids leaving home?
That’s common, and it doesn’t mean one of you is handling it better. Partners often process this transition differently based on their own history, attachment to the parenting role, and what they’re individually looking forward to or grieving. The goal is to understand your partner’s experience well enough to support each other through two different, but equally valid, transitions.
Is it too late to reconnect if we’ve been drifting apart for years, even before our child left?
No. The empty nest doesn’t create disconnection — it tends to reveal it, because the daily logistics of parenting stop filling the space where connection used to happen by default. That revealing can be uncomfortable, but it’s also an opening: it’s often the first time in years a couple has the time and quiet to address it. If the drift feels significant, working with a couples therapist can help you rebuild intentionally rather than starting from scratch alone.