There comes a time in every parents life when the last child leaves the nest. Well my time came this last week when my youngest son decided he wanted to move into an apartment with two of his closest friends about 15 minutes away from our house.  You see he’s not moving to another city, or to a neighboring state.  He’s not moving to states away or even across the country.  He’s not moving across the seas to a different country.  It’s only 15 minutes from home base.  15 minutes.

You would think that I would have no problems with this move as he’s out of the house.  Yet on the first night, I was experiencing some feelings I had never had before.  This parenting experience for me started 30 years ago when Deborah came into our lives December 12, 1978.  Another child entered my life 13 years later with the birth of Victoria on November 14, 1991.  Carter was born on January 5, 1997.  So I have been in the child centered stage of life for 37 years of my life, or over half of my life.  I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t have children.  I wondered what I would be like having no children in the house, but it seemed so far away as my children continued to grow and slowly moved away.

The time finally came as my last left the nest.  There was no knock on the bedroom door stating that he was home from the movies.  No plopping on the bed to summarize where he had been.  No asking me for a late night snack.  No expressing his need for the clothes to be washed.  No child in his room playing video games.  No backing the car up in the driveway trying to avoid a fender bender.  No noise in the house of his friends deciding to sleep over.  He was gone and it was quiet.  He was nowhere to be seen.  I was experiencing the empty-nest for the first time in 37 years.

Fortunately, I have a wonderful wife that I love to spend time with so that my focus is on all experiences and activities that we love to share.  Biking.  Hiking.  Going to new restaurants.  Trying a new brussels sprouts recipe together.  Talking about the challenges of employees.  Brainstorming new ways of marketing businesses.  Doting on new pictures of our grandsons.  Getting excited about the potty training of our middle grandson.  I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that I have a life beyond the child centered stage of life and it causes me to focus on the present and future and not on what I have lost.

In the midst of raising children, it is critically important to cultivate your relationship with your spouse on a daily basis so that you have something to look forward to when the children do leave the nest.  A large percentage of married couples divorce after the children leave because of this important step of the family life cycle.  If you are in this stage–empty-nest–one suggestion might be to begin to develop commonality with your spouse.  It might involve taking a cooking class together or taking dance lessons.  It might be to go hiking or taking a camera class together.  It doesn’t matter what it is but taking the first step to connect in some way that helps you to begin to move forward in the future with your spouse.