Transitioning To The Empty Nest Podcast Episodes

And his advice to younger would-be empty nesters was, make every time at the table count. And so, he saw the table as the central piece of getting the family together. And so, there are a lot of things that can be done at the table. And now at our house, it’s not done at the table anymore. Welcome, everyone, to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. 

Great to have you along today. I’m interviewing today Kaleb Beyer and Roger Gasser, and great to have both of you on. Hello to you. It’s good to be with you. Hello Matt. Today’s topic is emptying the house. Nesting, as we think about the marital experience, right? Actually, maybe rough numbers would show that half of the marital experience is empty nesting. 

I’m doing some rough math, 25 years with kids, 25 years without kids. And this is a significant part of the married experience. And so, what do we mean by empty nesters? I think the term is pretty well understood. The nest is empty. The chicks have been launched into this wide world. And now we continue with this new reality. 

So, there’s a lot to be said, Roger. So glad you’re on. Thank you. You’re our resident experienced one. You’ve done a great deal of thought on empty nesting so far as to having surveyed a number of folks that have gone through it. I talked to a variety of people across the country and asked them several basic questions. 

I didn’t want this project to just be my own thinking. And so, I tapped into the brains of many people. Let’s just start maybe with the landscape, Kaleb, empty nesting, how that impacts marriages. It’s a major transition, as you pointed out, for couples that have children, years of investing in these children. And now all of a sudden, your home is empty, so to speak. 

And so that comes with unique emotions, unique blessings, and challenges. But it’s interesting. What research would say is there’s actually a fair amount of stability through that transition, meaning that couples who are happy and satisfied before an empty nest occurs and happens, they likely will be happy and satisfied after, right? 

They have the, you know, connection, the ability to walk through conflict and those that are distressed. There’s nothing about going through emptying a nest and not having kids that all of a sudden resolves issues. Exactly. Even though we’re addressing the empty nest phase, you just made a very strong point in case that listed up those of you who still have them in the nest, because that is as indicative of what’s to come as much as anything. 

Also, Roger, I’d love to pick your brain a little bit. Kaleb dropped this term of transitions, which I think is a really helpful lens to view this from your experience. Is transition a good word? Transition is a fine word, although in my experience, as I collected books on empty nesting, I noticed that almost all of them were written by females. 

And so, I decided, I want to talk to couples, both dads and moms, to figure out, is this correct that this is such a difficult transition? I talked to quite a few, both dads and moms, and I talked to one dad who said this was never a problem at all. And I think that transition for the dad looks different than transition for the mom. 

Because transition for the mom often involves a role change, and I got that loud and clear when I talked to moms that it was difficult for them because they saw themselves as primarily the mom. They take care of children. That’s what they do. And so, when all the children are gone, what do I do now? 

Whereas the dad typically was the wage earner. And so, it wasn’t as much of a role change for him. And as mentioned, I got some different kinds of feedback depending on whether I’m talking to the dad, or the mom and it generally seems to be from the parents I talked to, tougher on the mom which is interesting. Now you dropped an important word as well, roles, that has a lot to do with this transition. 

One of the things that I think about here, Matt, is with premarital couples, one of the things that we walk through, and this applies to just all couples, marriage relationships, is what’s called the circumplex model. And essentially, it looks at two factors. Continuums, okay? On one continuum is what we’d refer to on one end as rigidity, and on the other end would be chaos. 

Right. Or over flexibility. Okay. So, let’s just take that continuum and think of role shift and transition. The idea is that if we are at either end, an extreme, it puts strain on the relationship, the marriage relationship, or the family relationship. So, for example, for a mother, as she’s transitioning in this role, if there’s a tendency to hold on to rigidly that same role in moving through the transition to empty nest where there is a shift that can be difficult for that individual. On the other hand, if it’s overly flexible, there’s no structure of what my role is. That obviously can be concerning as well. And so, moving from this, as you said, in the home, having kids, to my relationship with my kids looks different now. 

They’re still my children. They’re still my kids. But I’m relating to them differently, and I have a different role in their lives than actively nurturing and I have less responsibility. Kaleb, what you’ve just said there in that whole spectrum, rigid, is going to make for a difficult transition. Why? Well, because you’re not going to have that role and you’re going to have to let loose of it. 

That’s going to be difficult. Yep. But chaos or over flexibility is a problem. And I think what that speaks to is roles are important. Yes. Roles are settling, roles are calibrating. And when we go to this new normal, having a role is going to be helpful. What does a role look like for an empty nest mother? 

And I would love to hear it for an empty nest father. Roles are not gone. How do they change, Kaleb? So, they change, I think, in the place that you have in your children’s life. One of the things I think about is responsibility. When we talk about parenting, parenting often goes through phases. So, you think the early stages are really heavily nurturing. 

And then you move into more of the authoritative kind of stages. And then it’s more mentoring. And I would say, as they’re transitioning into young adulthood, right? It’s really about discipling and mentoring our children because they are going to be on their own. They’re going to be making decisions. 

They’re going to be all these different things. And so, it shifts, I think. You’re still a mother, but more to a friendship would you say, right? Yeah. The mother is not giving up the role of being a mother. It’s just taking on a new nuance. It’s taking on a new shape. That motherhood, which I think is comforting. 

It’s not that we shed all the roles. No. It’s that those roles shift and change to the times. So, I thought of one dad that I talked to in response to one of your questions. And that’s about concerning the role. And he says, I’m quoting here, maintaining purpose in life has always been important to me to keep a check on life. 

I often ask myself at the end of the day, is anyone a little better off today because I am still alive? If the answer is too often, no, I need to check my priorities. And so it might be that the role changes. By somebody calling him up and asking him for help, as opposed to one of his children asking him for help. 

I think it takes on a little broader brush. If we think that our role now is not as much just parenting our children, as much as being a light in this community and being the salt of the earth to the people around me. Okay, so Roger, you exploded roles in I think a really important way. I am going from being a father of six, to perhaps being a father of many. 

Or a grandfather of many. I think that provides a great deal of role vision. Yeah. And it might be, Matt, that when your children reach a certain age, they don’t ask you as much. And we have to be willing, that’s okay. We, as parents, are going to be outgrown by our children, and we have to accept that. 

They are going to be making the same decisions we made when we were their age, and my mom and dad didn’t try to prevent me from doing that. They saw a greater purpose in letting Roger learn some things on his own. And that has to happen as our children go through the teenage years. We have to lengthen the rope for them. 

Roger, we get a lot of questions about parents wanting to know proper relationships with adult children. What I hear is a few things. One is allowing our children to come to us rather than us always going to our children. I see that as one shift. And so, to do that, we want them to have the skills to know when they need help and how to ask for help, but I’d still love to put it to you, Roger. 

You see an adult child make an unwise choice, as you discuss that observation with your wife, and you no doubt have a conversation about what your role in that is. Well, there’s a common expression, rules without relationship equals rebellion. And so, the relationship is most important. Everything has to revolve around the relationship. 

And so, the issue at the moment is not whether we can get this child out of this predicament right now, because even if we could do that, the likelihood that the same predicament is going to arise tomorrow or next week is pretty high. And so, we need to help them become adults and we need to be able to show them ways to problem solve their own situation and come to a good conclusion as a good choice. 

Things are not going to be black and white. And so, we need to help them understand that. There are not just two choices here. Maybe there are four choices. Maybe there are ten choices. Maybe they’re all equally good. Maybe if you only see two choices, you haven’t thought about it enough. A word that came to my mind is example. 

I’m still thinking about roles here. I think what you’ve just shared is our role might shift from being a direct instructor to being a pattern creator or an exampler of principles, which I think is a very great way to entreat is that they are able to see an example that really antes up the responsibility because I found it easier to teach a concept than to show it. 

Yeah. So, the empty nest phase might just amp up our role responsibility. I’m thinking about the marital relationship and thinking back to how Roger, you had just mentioned based on your own interviews, that the women, the mothers, generally because of their role of being in the home and with kids, and it’s generally more difficult for them, and I’m thinking through the marital context and just, I think, in this transition, one of the things that’s helpful to keep in mind is the roles we value the most are often the most difficult to shift and to change.  

And I think that for the couple that is transitioning through empty nest, it can set up a dynamic. Okay. We’re assuming now for the mother, it’s the most difficult. For the husband, really not to understand and get what that’s like for the mother. What it’s like for his wife to walk through that, which really sets up a tension, and I think just being aware of that, that we view it as a phase that we’re transitioning, because it’s also a very beautiful time for each other to support each other through that time, through grieving, right, through loss, through that change, but it needs, I think, some awareness. 

Okay, so you said grieving. Yeah. And loss. So, what do you mean by that? Role changes or role shifts sometimes include grief and loss. Yes, as we look at a traditional grief loss cycle, before we move to the phase of acceptance, doesn’t mean we like it, but this is reality. 

Right. I’m in the role of a mother or a father with kids that aren’t in the home. Now I’m going to start engaging them like they’re not in the home. I have to let go or grieve what isn’t, what’s in the past. Yeah. Right. But intentionally kind of walking through that and processing through that. Otherwise, we start to live life as if the past is still present. 

That’s part of what grieving is. So, if we are not embracing the present role, maybe I’ve got some grieving to do. Well stated. Okay. Let’s now go to connections. Both of you pulled this up and really some of your examples, Roger, we’re just connecting with children. But Kaleb, I want to talk about this connection with our spouse. 

First, I want you to say, what do we mean by connection? And then I want you to help us understand why connection is a part of this conversation, why it matters as we discuss transitioning to the emptiness stage. So, we think about connection. It is, I can reach them. They respond to me. And they’re engaged, you know, and why that’s important is particularly in grief and loss, that can be a lonely process. 

And if the one that I love the most in this life, my spouse, is I’m alone in my grief with them in the house, but not connected to them. Right? Not engaged with them, not responsive to them. That just creates tension and disconnection that leads to further pain. Rather than what connection is meant for is relieving pain, relieving distress, saying, I’m not alone in this. 

I get you. I can’t change it. I can’t fix it. Okay, so connection is a huge concept, really important for healthy marital relationships. Yes. Now, I want to put my finger on the difference, because the connection with kids underfoot is very different than connection without any kids in the home, right? And I’m going to assert, sometimes our marital connection with our spouse is via the kids. 

I’m listening to you because Johnny matters and that’s what we’re talking about. Sure, yeah. But, not necessarily intentionally about us. Our relationship. Our struggles, you know, internally, personally, with life or situations or with Johnny, it might be about Johnny, but how I’m dealing with that and how you’re doing and how I feel about how you’re dealing with it. 

Right? That’s a connection between us and the relationship. So Matt, I think you could make a great point. The connection is different in the sense that if we’re not preemptive and intentional like Roger talked about prior to Empty Nest, of building this connection as a couple, outside of church, kids, all these things, they can include that, and they should include that. 

But not only that. I don’t think I’m wrong by going out on this limb. There’s probably a fair number of couples with whom connection with each other is too painful and hard. And so, to get out from underneath that connection, we’re just going to focus on the kids. And then once empty nest comes, they are coming face to face with that lack of connection. 

Am I too far off of some reality? No, I think that’s accurate. Right? I don’t think you’re far off reality. One thing we have not mentioned though, is Johnny at age 15 is a different Johnny that’s married at age 25 and you have in laws in the picture. And so, this is a good thing because as we are aging ourselves, we need to also consider the people they married and it would not be correct for us to assume that the person they married had exactly the same upbringing as they did. And so, we might need to expand our horizons and think more broadly than before. Okay, so there’s another lens now that has surfaced. Roger, based on what you’ve just said there, and that is something about expectation. This expectation that, oh, I kind of viewed my kids turning out this way. 

I kind of viewed them living in this proximity. I kind of viewed this relationship with my grandkids and it’s just not even near that. There are in the emptiness stage, some losses that we have to process. That’s a good way to say it. And also, we have to probably increase our resilience and our flexibility. 

And the way that one does this is by learning to change plans. The Lord works with us over time, hones off our sharp edges and makes us more flexible, more open to connecting with people that we wouldn’t have normally connected with. You know, Roger, I want to reconnect this concept with roles that we talked about. 

If we don’t process our role change and shift, that flexibility is going to be difficult in a lot of life, isn’t it? So, this concept of letting go is a really good term which we use in this area, letting go. We have to let go of ourselves, but not that we’re letting go of ourselves, we’re seeing our role more expansive, as you’ve already said. 

But that allows us to have a healthy flexibility with our expectations. Sure, we can have hopes and dreams for our kids. And we probably all do as they’re young, but we really need to be open to the possibility that the Lord might have something different in mind for them. And if the Lord has something different in mind, he’s got something better in mind than our idea. 

Yeah. As we’re talking about this grieving and this letting go, opens up space to engage in perhaps other ministry opportunities like it was alluded to earlier mentorships or passing down even adopting quote unquote, someone within the local church that you can pour yourself into or activities that you can do as a couple. 

I think that’s what it opens up space for with this flexibility, there’s no less purpose and meaning, but it certainly looks different. It manifests itself differently. And I think this flexibility provides opportunity for that to be expressed differently and therefore have a meaningful, purposeful life where you’re pouring into individuals that maybe are part of the church family and may not be necessarily directly part of your own family. 

That’s really good. Roger, I would love to pick your brain, your experience a little bit. I think it’s easy for kids to define a marriage. After all, that’s a sure connection between a couple. How have you and Sue processed your grounding? Who are you as a couple? We’re kind of this older couple that has gone through a lot of different things in life. 

And some of those things have knocked off some rough edges. And so, we’re a little more willing probably to tolerate differences in other people because we have been different people ourselves. I mean, I was a different person at age 15 and 25 and 35 and 45 and at 65 I was a different person yet. The way that we’re defined now is different than the way we were defined 10 years ago. 

I don’t know a good definition for us. I don’t know what it’s going to be like in a year or five years or ten years, probably different. What I heard, Roger, is part of that definition is a couple. That’s what kept on coming up in your definition. We are a couple that have endured these things and have made us this way. 

I hear that Roger and Sue are a growing couple. And that’s what you would prefer people to see. Kaleb, I’d love your input. When I think about couple identity, Matt, we often use the term we, okay? And I think the important thing is for us as couples, regardless really what stage we’re in, that we have a we category that certainly we can include family, but there’s a separate category That’s we as a couple as one in Christ. I like that. We and us in Christ, I think is a really nice way to capture that. With few exceptions though, Matt, one of us as the couple is going to depart life before the other. It’s rare that both happen at the same time. And so, when we put too much emphasis on the couple. We are kind of tying up God’s hands and allowing him to be put in a box where no box exists. 

And I’m thinking of what brother Jeremiah Psinas told the Champaign Church when he was talking about what does the Bible say about marriage and about singleness? He related a story that he noticed a brother in his church that was married and he thought he’s really good at being a married person. And then he lost his wife. 

And then to Jeremiah’s surprise, he noticed, well, he’s really good at being a single person. And so, whether married or single, we need to reflect the Lord’s imprint on our lives and glorify him. Yeah. Well said. To our listeners, thanks for being with us. Thanks, Kaleb and Roger for sharing here today. 

There has been some work done on our website. You’ll find some articles and some helps on empty nesting. If you search our website for empty nest, those things should surface. So, we trust that the content here is helpful and God glorifying. Goodbye.