Why You Should Think of Your Empty Nest as an Open Door

By having a framework and a philosophy for this stage of life, I can shape my experience to make sure I take advantage of everything that it offers.

Eliza and Eleanor are six years apart in age, so when my older daughter left for college, I comforted myself with the thought, We still have all the high school years ahead of us.

The days are long, but the years are short. Now it’s time for Eleanor to leave too.

I want to think about different aspects of this new phase:

• Enjoying travel and adventures (my sister and I are planning a big hiking trip)
• Learning new subjects or skills
• Examining existing family traditions and evolving them where necessary
• Creating new traditions (I’m considering the Fourth of July as a new major family holiday)
• Handling the actual transition (i.e., college drop-off day)
• Considering physical changes to the apartment (a now-uninhabited bedroom)
• Finding new ways of working
• Making more plans with friends
• Doing more to support the causes I believe in
• Growing closer to Jamie
• Spending more time with my sister and my parents

I’ve been talking to parents who have already gone through this stage, to ask for their advice and warnings.

Some have advice about the actual day of transition. “I knew that I was going to be a wreck after I dropped off my third and final child at college,” a friend told me. “So I planned a two-week trip that started the next day. I had to race home from the drop-off, do my last-minute tasks, and the next morning, I was headed to the airport. I had a great time, and when I came back, the passage of time and the big adventure made the changes at home much easier to take.”

Another friend warned me about the change in routine. “Be careful about how much you work,” she said. “My husband and I love to work, and I know you and your husband are the same way. But until our kids left, we didn’t realize how much we relied on family life to give us a healthy routine. For the first year or two, we worked all the time — and we loved it — but in the end, it wasn’t a good life. Now we make sure to take mealtimes and weekend times off, and to make plans on the weekends and for vacations.”

I’m also thinking about ways to stay in touch with my daughter now that she’s living far away. I want her to look forward to getting texts, emails or calls from me, so I don’t want to get in the habit of sending nagging or nudging messages. I plan to text many wordless photos of our dog, Barnaby, or to call when something funny happens in our neighborhood.

It’s sad to say farewell to a happy period of life, but it’s also exciting to think about new possibilities — even for small things. “Nowadays, my wife and I watch TV during dinner,” a friend confessed. “We were always strict about regular, tech-free family meals, but one day she looked at me and said, ‘Now it’s just the two of us! What do we want?’ We realized that we want BritBox dinners.”

From my study of happiness — and from life — I know that the most important element to a happy life is strong relationships. That’s why an “open door” is a challenge: It brings significant change to many important relationships.

• How will I evolve my relationship to my daughter? How can we stay connected to the right degree?
• How will I evolve my relationship to my husband? Now that it’s just the two of us again, we’ll relate to each other in different ways.
• How will I evolve my relationship to my extended family and friends? Now that I have more time and freedom, how do I take advantage of that?

Rubin is the author of many books, including “Life in Five Senses.”

Courtesy Austin Walsh/Penguin Random House

In De Profundis, Oscar Wilde wrote, “I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me.” Along those lines, whenever I identify a happiness challenge, I make it into a “project.” (For some people, that approach sounds like unappealing homework, but for me, it’s fun.)

So I’m tackling the “Open Door” phase head-on. Possibilities under consideration include everything from getting a second dog to going on a writers retreat to starting a new book group to volunteering my time.

Research shows that having a sense of meaning and purpose is an important element to a happy life, and having children is one way that many of us have that sense of meaning and purpose. So what happens when the children walk out the door? There will be a change.

One thing about me: I get sad when any period comes to an end. Even for an experience I don’t enjoy (such as my high school summer job as a waitress), I feel a pang when I think, That’s over, that period is closed, this is the last day, time to move on.

For a period I did enjoy — children under my roof — it’s especially poignant. Not to mention that this ending is fraught with thoughts of my own mortality. Now I must consider how I will spend the third third of my life.

What else should I be thinking about? I know that the more reflection I put into approaching this stage of life, the more I will get from it.

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.