COLUMN:

by Tom Merrill, Ph.D. and Bobbie Sandoz-Merrill, MSW

When empty nest brings relationship problems

Dear Tom & Bobbie:

Six months after our last child left home, our family dog died. Our original goal was to immediately get a new pet, but my husband wants a big dog and I want a small one … and we have been at impasse for a year over this. Yet as much as we miss our kids and dog, the real problem is that we are having a horrible time with each other, and our disagreement about the dog size is just the tip of the iceberg.

With all the kids and pets and associated activities out of our lives, it is now clear just how much we have drifted apart, and I am on the verge of calling it quits. Am I out of my mind, or is this a common problem connected to the empty nest syndrome? And can anything be done to help us?

Bobbie says When you take into account that approximately 70 percent of our combined first, second and third marriages have broken apart, and that 93 percent of those couples who are still together are not ecstatic about the quality of their partnerships, your empty nest report is not surprising.

Yet, knowing so many others are having the same experience does not eliminate the frustration or loneliness people in your position feel. Nor, does it ameliorate the impact this loneliness has on the quality of your life, health, happiness or longevity. If we take a moment to explore what got so many people into this position, we have a better chance of reversing it.

What has more than likely happened to you and your husband — along with the millions of other couples like you — started somewhat benignly and imperceptibly sometime during the first 10 years of your marriage. It is at some point during this period that you began to treat each other very differently than you did when you were first falling in love and trying to win and hold the love of the other. The loving focus on each other and caring kindness were gradually replaced with inattention to the relationship, along with the hurts and quarrels that accompany such a change.

To accommodate the bruising and pain of this alternation in the quality of their relationship, most couples return to the way they were prior to meeting. They look to old buddies and friends for attention and activities and fall into the cultural trap of publicly disdaining and roasting their partner while privately gossiping with even more intensity about him or her.

Needless to say, the couple relationship grows increasingly disconnected and distant. However, because children and houses and a flurry of activities, along with the family pets, are now a part of the equation, these couples remain together, often rather happily — except when they are focusing on the quality of their personal partnership. However, when the distractions of the children and pets are gone, their lack of closeness and failure to be in a special relationship shifts from manageable to increasingly uncomfortable as you have so aptly described.

The good news is that all of you can fix this nagging distance between you if you want to, even though you don’t currently feel close. The way to begin is for each partner to stop blaming the other, and to take a careful and honest inventory of all the ways they have failed to honor their partner and then to fully acknowledge and genuinely apologize for each aspect of their part in the breakdown.

Only then can the slate get cleared and closeness return, while you discover how to be consistently kind to — and stop hurting — each other, not just some of the time but all of the time from this day forward.

Tom says I like what Bobbie says because it puts the responsibility for correcting a deteriorating relationship like the one you have described right smack where it belongs ... squarely in the laps of both partners. But there is also an insidious, covert third party at work making a major contribution to the relationship breakdown and statistics Bobbie refers to ... and that is The Culture!

The behaviors that you and your partner have likely engaged in, the ways you have been with each other that have scarred your relationship didn’t occur in a vacuum. Rather, they were introduced, reinforced and promoted by a culture that views them as “normal.” Yet, on closer examination, they are not. Unkindness to the ones we love is not really “normal.”

So, while turning your relationship into the partnership you originally wanted when you first got together is possible, success depends on a sincere desire and willingness to change the culturally sanctioned attitudes and behaviors that caused it to break down in the first place.

To do this, you will need to do as Bobbie suggests ... take a “careful and honest inventory” and become acutely aware of all the “full-nest” behaviors that contributed to the current “horrible time” you are now experiencing. Once aware, a commitment to dropping those behaviors from your repertoire — permanently — can transform the relationship. And that is, I assume what you want more than you want to take a hike.

Although the statistics tell us that there are many less than ecstatic partnerships living in the empty nests, there are also many “empty nests” that are occupied by very happy, loving couples. By understanding and making a commitment to changing your piece of the “horrible time” relationship, you will be raising the bar on what is acceptable in your nest, and your partner is very likely to follow suit.

It will be different — very different — because we are saying give up the old way of being. Really give it up. Thus by beginning the process of being kind and honoring at all times you will not only be settling for more, but will be making it possible for you and your partner to join those second-halfers who are experiencing the empty-nest stage of their relationships as even better than ever.

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