#1 - How Empty is Your Nest? (Part 2) - Changing Relationships

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How Empty is Your Nest? (Part 1) - Mixed Feelings Stirred Up by the Empty Nest
How Empty is Your Nest? (Part 2) - Changing Relationships

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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Changing Relationships

Guests: Barbara Rainey and Susan Yates

From the series: How Empty Is Your Nest? (Day 2 of 2)

Air date: August 2, 2016

Bob: If you work for Hallmark, keep listening. Susan Yates may have a suggestion for you here on a whole new line of party invitations.

Susan: I would like to know, with a show of hands, how many of you have ever been to a party to celebrate the beginning of the empty nest? [Laughter] One, two—

Barbara: Three.

Susan: —four—oh, yay! [Laughter] Good for you all! You may be on the cutting age of a new movement in America. [Laughter] We hope so because we feel like this is a season, not to be dreaded, but to be celebrated—and oh, how we need to celebrate in the seriousness of life today.

[Segment of I Just Want to Celebrate]

1:00

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, August 2nd. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine. I don’t know who’s version of Celebrate that was—was that Rare Earth?—I think it was; yes. Celebrating the empty nest may sound like a paradox / a contradiction in terms, but it’s actually not. You can do it! We’ll talk more about that today. Stay with us.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Tuesday edition. You said it was a while before it dawned on you that the empty nest had finally arrived.

Dennis: Yes.

Bob: But I mean, you knew—

Dennis: I really had all these grand plans of how I thought we would—

Barbara: Yes; he did. [Laughter]

Dennis: —disengage from being parents. We would flip a switch—in true male-style—

Bob: Yes.

Barbara: He did.

Dennis: —and we’d just be driving off into the sunset in a convertible, laughing and having fun.

2:00

Bob: And the switch didn’t flip? Is that what you are saying? [Laughter]

Dennis: Oh, my goodness! [Laughter] The switch may have ground its way to the other side—it took a couple of years, Bob.

Bob: Barbara, let me ask you—and by the way, welcome back to FamilyLife Today.

Barbara: Thanks.

Bob: If you could have flipped the switch, do you think Dennis could have flipped the switch?

Barbara: Oh, yes.

Bob: So he was ready. He didn’t have the emotional processing moving into the empty nest that you did?

Barbara: Well, he had more than I expected. I was kind of surprised because every once in a while he would walk through the house or walk around the backyard and go, “Gosh, I really miss those years with the kids.” It would surprise me because I didn’t really expect him to feel those things that I was feeling. I knew I would, but I didn’t expect him to do so.

Dennis: I’d come home from work and the car would be surrounded, like it was being invaded by a group of—

Barbara: Yes, all those years our kids were home.

Dennis: Yes—bandits. All of a sudden, you pull up in front of the house and—

Barbara: Sometimes, nobody is there because I wasn’t always there. [Laughter]

3:00

Dennis: —there is nothing happening!

Barbara: I didn’t have to be home—it was great!

Bob: I remember you talking—you’d come into the office. The way you described it—you said, “There’s no tension against the muscle,”—this muscle you’ve been working out with for 20-plus years.

Dennis: Oh, yes. It’s called the Daddy Muscle. I mean, you’ve had to be a daddy—now, I’m still a dad / I have adult children—you know, you go home, you leave work, you pull up in front of the house, and you get ready for your second job—being a husband and being a father. Well, all of a sudden, the father-thing is out of there—I mean no tension against the muscle.

Bob: You [Barbara] spent the first part of the empty nest years together with your friend, Susan Yates, who is a pastor’s wife—lives in the Washington, DC, area.

The two of you collaborated on a book called Barbara and Susan’s Guide to the Empty Nest. Then, you’ve had the opportunity, in a number of settings, to speak to women on this subject. You were at Park Cities Presbyterian Church in Dallas, a while back, and spoke to a group of women.

4:00

You outlined the key questions that women ask themselves during the empty nest years. Already, this week, we have heard you address two of those. Refresh us on what those were.

Barbara: The first two questions are: “Am I the only one who feels this way?” The empty nest can be a very lonely time for women, and you are feeling things you didn’t expect to feel— and, maybe, some of them that you did. There is a real isolation factor in the empty nest. So I think most women are asking the question, “Am I the only one who feels this way?”

Dennis: It is back to what Susan said at the beginning of the broadcast—there aren’t celebration parties, announcing to the world: “I’m now transitioning into this new calling and season of life.”

Barbara: Exactly. The second question is: “What is happening to my relationships?” because you kind of look at each other—the kids are not there—and you think: “Okay; who are you and who am I? What is our relationship like?” You realize that you need to, perhaps, do some renegotiating and...