Midlife relationships & sex – the empty nest

Ok, so a couple of weeks ago I promised to write a longer post for people who are approaching the empty nest and wondering what’s next for their relationship. I’m also being told that if my book is to be fully representative of midlife onwards it needs to talk intelligently and sensitively about sex because it’s such an important part of it all. So I’m practicing on you because I always feels like I’m talking to friends and I warn you this is long, one of those pot of tea or big glass of wine posts. So let’s begin – midlife relationships & sex – the empty nest.

Midlife relationships & sex – the empty nest

Fundamentally, you to have to learn how to be alone together again – not just for the giddy escape of a childfree weekend but for long expanses of time. Over the last ten years I’ve often talked about the importance of keeping the pilot light burning over the course of your relationship and now, with a bit of endeavour, you’ll hopefully see that flame power up. I should add that as I write, I realise that this comes from the perspective of having three quite outgoing sons who were very likely to be ok when they started university and a husband who was going through it too. I know from your bumps in the road feedback that quite a few of you have had children who struggled and that others of you are facing it on your own. I promised to share my own experience but if that’s you, I hope there will be something you can take from this post too.

The empty nest – getting ready for departure

It’s seven years since my first boy left for university, the middle one took a gap year so he followed four years later and the youngest three years ago. You’d think it would get easier but every child leaves their own shaped hole in your heart because they each create a unique space in your family. It helps if you consider in advance what that is, what you’ll miss most about them – the particular spice that for the last eighteen years or so they’ve added to the flavour of your day.

For me the first one leaving was hard because it was the sign of my family cracking open for the first time, we would never be the same fixed unit of five again. He and I have a very close relationship because for a while it was just the two of us feeling our way forward in a scary new world and I think that forged a bottomless bond between us. I know I’m especially protective of him for that reason, not that he needs it much now… but the comforting closeness remains.

When the middle boy went it felt as if somebody turned the heating down at home. He is the warmth and the light, always ready to make you laugh or give you a hug or just listen when you have a problem. As the middle one he is also the great negotiator, skilled at diffusing household tensions without anybody feeling compromised.

And the third of course is my baby, the one who gave me solace by cleaving to me as he watched the other two branch out. He’s always been my fellow lover of books and words, syntax and languages; the boy for a brain-stretching conversation that can end up absolutely anywhere or a lively glass of wine and a giggle. As his departure loomed it was also the hazard warning light signifying the closing of my mothering days.

It’s worth recognising your children’s individual characteristics like this because the pain of empty nesting comes not only from your own loss of role and identity. It also stems from the fact that these young adults who have hopefully become your good friends too, each bring their own colour to your days. And so you can ache with a new feeling of loneliness in your every day.

For some people empty nesting is a relief and there’s nothing wrong with that, it depends on how your experience of parenting has panned out. Even within a couple you can find that you have opposing views. Mal and I differ on it. For me, being a parent was the thing I wanted more than anything else and I think it’s because I was a bit of a lonely child. Although I had an older sister and brothers they’d pretty much left home by the time I was born so I grew up in a quiet house with older parents and I always longed for the energy of a spirited family home. I never underestimated my luck when, after a false start, I got that. It was simple but to me it was my own version of storybook perfect – a loving and fun husband, three boisterous boys all with their distinct personalities, dogs, cats, goldfish, a tortoise… life wasn’t always easy but we were always happy together. Closing the door on the bad times that life brings and retreating into the heart of my own family was the very definition of comfort to me. But I knew it wasn’t forever.

I also knew that Mal’s experience was different to mine. He grew up in a noisy, frenetic household of six children and maybe that affected him just as my quiet upbringing affected me. Until we met he had never planned to have children. His dreams centred around an aesthetic life, following his creative path in a home that was always tidy with weekends dedicated to fun pursuits as well as unfettered free time for his rugby and karate. When we met I already had a son and so my terms were obviously non-negotiable. He threw himself into family life wholeheartedly but our outlooks always differed – for him the empty nest was the pot of gold at the end of a beautiful rainbow whereas for me it was the storm cloud on the horizon.

I’ve noticed the same thing with quite a few couples we know, one often finds more identity in family life than the other and so as the empty nest approaches they have different outlooks and emotions. As such, it’s really important to take time to understand and respect each other’s point of view way before you start heading towards it. Even though Mal quite literally skips back to the car whenever we drop one of them off, he knows that I’m trailing behind him with a heavy heart and so he does at least temper his jubilation!

The real beginning of our empty nest came (or so we thought – but that’s another story as you know) when we dropped the youngest off for the first time. There comes a point when there’s nothing more you can do for them other than say goodbye. And it is a goodbye because when you see them again they’ll be forever changed, not in a fundamental way but they’ll have built a whole new inner life that you’ll never be fully part of.

It’s important to let them go with gladness though. In the same way that you left them on their first day at school with a big cheery smile on your face regardless of how you felt inside, your parting gift is the semblance of your belief that everything will be ok for them.

In an attempt to take some of the sting out of it I’d spent ages imagining this moment but it didn’t make it any easier. I kept tight hold of my emotions as we said goodbye – but even Mal only managed to drive around the corner before he had to stop and catch his breath. The severing of your family days is a big moment. A huge one.

Midlife relationships – how to rekindle them

As always I had a plan though and this is the next piece of advice I’ll give you – book a trip away so that you don’t have to spend too long in the desolately empty house. You need that break clause. And it helps you not to sit at home waiting for the phone to ring. My experience of all three of them has been that they fully immerse themselves in everything for the first term and don’t give home a backward glance. Low moments don’t tend to come until they go back after Christmas and things aren’t as shiny and new.

I’d booked for us to go Greek Island hopping, something we’d always wanted to do but found too much of a challenge with three boys in tow. I’d been quietly looking forward to it as a reward for getting through the goodbyes but as we left, we were handling things very differently. Mal was buoyed up for adventure, I on the other hand shuffled around Manchester Airport seeing the ghosts of our excited family holiday departures on every corner. I looked and felt bereaved.

And for the first couple of days I was silent. This was the first glass of holiday wine soon after we’d landed – I hadn’t even bothered to get changed and I remember Mal asking plaintively, ‘when are you going to cheer up?’ I still felt filled with a huge sense of loss…

…but slowly things shifted. I started noticing all of the things we hadn’t been able to do with three juvenile mindsets to balance. Things like renting a quadbike and exploring the mountains at leisure…

… and jumping on a ferry to move on to a different island whenever we pleased.

This photo popped up in my memories the other day and it made me smile. We were on a ferry adventure then too, heading to France for three weeks of camping and it was wonderful. But this candid picture taken by the middle one (who probably shouldn’t have had his sticky paws on the camera) is different to the usual smiling family holiday photos. It reminds me of how exhausting it all was – and we looked it!

At least it seems the pilot light was still flickering though!

The ‘If Not Now When’ list

Anyway, I digress. We used our first empty nester Greek Island hopping holiday to work on our ‘If Not Now When” list because INNW is one of the topmost considerations of midlife. So what does it involve and how is it different to a bucket list? Well it’s something you work on separately and then together. Perhaps the most important thing about it is that you phase it with the acknowledgement that your circumstances and energy levels will change as you grow older. At this stage in life we all need to face the fact that our stamina will at some point lessen. The INNW list involves looking at all of your hopes and dreams for the second half of your life, deciding what you want to do both separately and together, working out what’s actually feasible and then scheduling it according to the required output.

We worked separately on what we called our long lists. There were no limits at all on these and they included our wildest dreams as well as more practical ones. We chatted through them together and they alone gave us topics for new conversation to last a few years! The interesting thing is discovering commonalities from the mad things you’ve put on the long list, there are exciting dreams that you can achieve together. The next stage was editing them down to a more realistic midlist, bearing in mind the budget and time we hoped to have – it’s a bit of a shocker when you realise that you may only have around 20 years of travel energy left. We worked out what we’d like to do together but also what to keep for ourselves. Everybody needs to have interests of their own.

The balance here is critical. As more attention is being paid to the second half of life, the new advice coming out suggests that for a happy and fulfilled retirement, you should start thinking about how you’d like it to look like at least ten years in advance. The INNW exercise gives you an indication of whether you share a vision. Research is showing that currently a lot of couples only realise when they retire that they have differing ideas of how time will play out, with one partner imagining everything will be done as a couple and the other finding that suffocating. Some couples find they have different expectations of how they will spend their pensions with one half wanting to enjoy the money and the other hoping to leave it as a solid inheritance for their adult children. Another problem that comes up is that some see this next phase as a time of adventure while their partner is looking forward to peace and rest. These scenarios also came up as bumps in the road from multiple Midlifechic readers.

When we got home we spent the winter defining a shortlist and applying a rough timeline to it. So last year you saw us trying out different kinds of travel. We deliberately did that while we still have an income so that whenever we retire we’ll have a better idea of how to spend our precious savings. This year we planned a summer of music in the UK, we’re four events in with five more to go and we’re loving every minute of it. Again it’s deliberate – we’re doing it now because we’re starting to notice our energy flagging after twelve hours of dancing and yet live music events were something our longlists both showed we felt we’d missed out on in our twenties. As each year draws to a close we spend the winter reflecting on what we loved and what we didn’t and then tailor our INNW list accordingly.

I’m finding that it gives me a framework of things to look forward to and that makes life feel full of adventure again. They’re all things I couldn’t do when the boys were younger and so it throws light into the empty nest for me. We have our separate passions too, Mal’s been able to ramp up his karate and travel to events that I have no interest in. I have my blog and an increasing number of ageing related projects that fascinate me, plus of course the potential of the book.

Midlife sex – setting it alight

If you have a balance of things that you love doing on your own and things you do together, you soon see the flame of your relationship start to roar. The solus activities give you plenty to talk about and the mutual passions reignite the magic. For us a summer of disco is turning out to be pure bliss, we’re enjoying it even more than the travel which isn’t what we expected. It’s just a case of rediscovering whatever first united you, for some people it will be climbing to the top of a peak together… or beating the other to a hole in one… or completing the day’s crossword in record time. It can be geeky, nichey and it doesn’t have to be cool – there’s nothing remotely cool about 70s disco dancing but Mal and I danced together long before we ever had our first conversation so it’s always been the thing that unites us. You must have something too.

As someone who lives mostly in her head I would never have imagined that physical activities would give me such a charge. But the sparks that fly when we’re dancing or lifting weights at the gym make our relationship fizz and crackle. I guess it’s fundamentally down to the bonding properties of endorphins but there’s definitely a pleasure in seeing your other half’s physical prowess too. A piece of unpublished research that I’ve been reading includes interviews with people about sexuality and sensuality in the second half of life. It illustrates that when long established couples start sharing passions for new activities, sensuality and sexuality is reawakened naturally. Many of the couples interviewed say that after a period of readjustment they’ve gone on to have much better sex than they ever did in their younger years.

And that of course is the other joy of an empty nest or rather an empty house. There’s time and space to flirt and smooch without a kid mock-vomiting in the corner. You’ll know the Gottman Institute’s theory about the six second kiss that releases oxytocin, the hormone that builds bonds and trust. If you haven’t tried it, move on from the pecks – it makes a big difference. If you’re rebuilding intimacy in your relationship after the basecamp years of child-raising it’s a very nice practical – to be repeated regularly throughout the day. You’ll soon find that your heart beats faster and wants for more than just a kiss. The flirting is important too… the little compliments… the innuendo… again all so much easier for not having pained teenage ears around.

But of course this side of a midlife relationship often needs a bit more rebuilding than kisses alone. When your children leave home you need to talk openly and honestly about absolutely everything, probably at the same time as you’re doing your midlist. Most women I’ve discussed this with have found their husbands to be very responsive to a conversation that begins, “let’s see how we can make our sex life more fun!” Go back to the beginning of your relationship and talk about everything that relates to sex from that point onwards. What you’ve loved, what you haven’t, what you’ve wished for and dreamed of, how your body’s changed, what hurts and what kind of intimacy you hope for now. If you find it’s difficult to open the discussion, bring it up one night just before you go to sleep – the darkness always helps.

Menopause is a big factor in this. I’ve talked about it before and I’ll say again that because it’s so personal, the one thing the many celebrities who front the menopause awareness campaigns don’t talk much about is GUSM (the genito-urinary syndrome of menopause). It used to be called vaginal atrophy which was a bit easier to understand. It’s worth knowing that at least 70% of women will struggle with it in one way or another – in the form of UTIs, a leaky bladder or dryness. It can progress all the way to complete atrophy where the skin thins making sex painful and the labia and clitoris eventually disappear. The site of any episiotomy scarring can become painful and fragile too. For many women it can be rectified with localised oestrogen and specialist vaginal moisturisers. If you have any vaginal or vulval discomfort see your GP as soon as you can, the quicker you pick up on it, the less erosion will happen. Don’t waste time by feeling embarrassed about it – it’s largely an easily solvable problem if you catch it quickly enough.

If your libido’s gone missing over the years, give some serious thought to testosterone which will put the fizz back into you. You can try asking your GP to prescribe it although some won’t and if they do, they give you the male version which needs to be apportioned with care. If you approach a private menopause clinic they will be able to prescribe Androfeme which is a female version applied daily as a pea-sized dab of cream on your thigh. I can honestly say that it’s the one component of my HRT regime that I wouldn’t live without, not only from the perspective of libido but because it brought back my mental acuity and it helps with my strength building too.

Some of you have told me that your other half is struggling with issues such as erectile disfunction. Some men find it comes and goes (no pun there) and others find it to be a growing problem (no pun there either!). Communication and understanding are both so important and I guess as you grow older together and more of these problems arise, you can face them together more easily if you’ve already worked on rebuilding the foundation of intimacy.

Midlife sex and all that it involves reminds me of the beautiful old Triumph Stag I had before children. You just had to know if it needed a bit of extra choke, when to double declutch and how to press down hard on the accelerator at a particular point. When it was off, it was glorious and the more attention it got, the better it ran!

Midlife relationships & sex – the empty nest in summary

So, I feel as though I’ve rambled on a bit but this has been a stream of thought as I’ve replied to the many people who have asked for practical help as they face the looming empty nest in the next couple of months. Let me summarise:

• Parting day is tough, it’s a bear hunt – there’s no way round it, there’s no way over it – you just have to go through it. Remember this is what you wanted for them – letting them go gladly is the bittersweet paradox of being a good parent.
• Have something planned for the other side and make sure you both see it as a bit of a working holiday, a launch pad for the second half of your lives
• Make your INNW long list and see where each of your dreams lie – it will tell you whether you have a future together or not
• Hopefully you do and you can then go on to make your midlist
• With your INNW dreams in mind, take a little time to re-feather the bed of your sex life. You need to do this now so that when you start on your INNW plans, the new sparks that fire can catch light.
• When you have a clear picture of your time, money and passions, create your final INNW shortlist
• Put year one into action
• Assess and reassess until you know where your joys lie – both together and apart
• Live happily ever after!

The secret is that there’s a whole new life ahead

I’ll end with a reminder that it’s very easy to become misty eyed about the years of family life. This was 10th September 2003, our five year anniversary of being together. We’d just come back from a torturous drive to Cornwall with our then three-week old youngest and realised that any trip with three growing boys in the back of our Renault Scenic was going to be the tenth circle of hell. As we drove away in a new Chrysler Voyager that felt like a tank I was a long way away from my carefree Triumph Stag days – it seemed symbolic of the long journey we had ahead of us.

But this was exactly 19 years on from that day, 10th September 2022 and we were beginning to realise that we’d taken a new turn with road signs for good times coming up. The thing is that we’re given all of these predicted milestones in life – get married, buy a house, have a baby and steer it through to graduation – then we hand all of that over to the next generation and it can feel as if there’s nothing left for us. But that in itself is freeing. We’ve made it through (or around!) society’s targets and now there’s a free road ahead. If we’re lucky, life is up for total reinvention. We’re living off piste, there will be obstacles to swerve but we have the experience and fortitude to manage that. All we have to do is open our minds and squeeze life to the pips. We deserve this time.

That was a long post – I’l leave you with a video that Mal made a couple of years ago. It encapsulates the joy of a family summer spent together and then the joy of the return to the empty nest. We have a disco weekend ahead but I’ll be back next week with who knows what. I’m relishing this summer of writing!

Disclosure: ‘Midlife relationships & sex – the empty nest’ is not a sponsored post

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