Empty Nest Couples Therapy: How to Reconnect

Rediscovering Connection in the Empty Nest

Dropping your child off at college or their first apartment can be a proud milestone — but for many parents, it also leaves a painful gap at home. After that goodbye hug, you may look at your partner and think, “Now what?” The routines and roles that shaped your life for decades have shifted, and the silence between you can feel overwhelming.

This is where empty nest couples therapy can help. The empty nest stage is bittersweet: full of pride for your child, but also a chance to reflect on your relationship. After many years of parenting, it’s natural to feel disconnected or unsure of who you are as a couple today.

Who Are You Now?

Parenting often demands so much that parts of yourself get set aside. Maybe you once loved travel, art, or activism, but those passions took a back seat to family life. Now, as empty nesters, it’s time to rediscover who you are — as individuals and as partners.

Many couples find therapy for empty nesters is a turning point: a space to reflect on your personal growth and create a new sense of shared purpose.

How Empty Nest Couples Therapy Helps You Reconnect

Empty nest couples therapy gives you the space to pause, reflect, and rebuild. With the support of a therapist, you and your partner can process the changes that come with this transition, address the distance that may have grown between you, and learn practical tools to strengthen communication and intimacy. It’s a chance to reimagine your relationship not just as parents, but as partners entering a new chapter together.

Navigating Disconnection

If you and your partner feel distant after the kids leave, you’re not alone. In empty nest marriage counseling, one of the most powerful tools we use is the Gottman Method’s concept of Love Maps — getting to know your partner’s inner world again.

Start with open-ended questions like:

• What has been the biggest change in your life since becoming a parent?

• What passions or interests do you want to explore now?

• How do you see our future together?

• Are there old hurts we need to talk through?

These conversations lay the foundation for rebuilding closeness and creating new shared meaning in your relationship.

Looking Ahead

Working with a therapist can ease the grief of children leaving home while helping you define what comes next. As someone married for 34 years and a parent for 21, I understand the challenges and opportunities of this transition.

Empty nest couples therapy isn’t just about repairing what feels lost — it’s about creating the next chapter of your marriage with more freedom, intimacy, and connection.

Life Transitions - A New Beginning In Life

Image Credit: HBO

Going through a life transition and starting a new beginning in life can be both daunting and exhilarating. It’s a mix of fear and self-doubt, balanced by self-belief. It asks you to take a leap of faith—a bet on yourself.

I’m sharing my husband, Andrew Southam’s, very first Substack post because it beautifully captures what it feels like to stand on the edge of change. In it, he reflects on starting something new, and his words resonate deeply with the experience of navigating a life transition and embracing a new beginning in life.

Beginnings

This is the very beginning.

It’s always scariest at the beginning, right? Somewhere, years ago, I read about the theory of dangerous precedents; “Never do anything for the first time.” A quick look online just taught me this idea comes from the law, meaning, basically, try to find legal precedent to support your case, rather than create something new that may be contested or defeated. But it’s also a feeling I’ve had over and over in my life; the first, hopeful sense of a thing I wanted to try, and then up looms the risk of failure, of humiliation, of disappointment, towering up like The Wall along the border of the Kingdom of the North, in Game of Thrones. “100 leagues long and over 700 feet high and made of solid ice. Constructed using both magic and mundane means“. How perfect.

We haul these things out of the prop cupboard, I do anyway, to get in our own way. So, if you’re reading this, know I’ve spent a lot of time staring up at the Wall, putting post-it notes on it, avoiding it to attend to other things, having snacks, feeling exhausted, feeling alternately that there might be worth in this, and that it might be worthless. This thing called a Substack.

If I can reach for any reassurance, it’s that so many really good things in my life, ideas, creative projects, adventures, conversations have been proceeded by the most uncomfortable feelings. I’ve learned to trust how untrustworthy they are, the feelings that say “don’t do it”. So here I am, let’s see how this goes. I’ll tell you everything I can that I think you might find interesting. I hope to entertain and surprise you, and possibly myself. I’ll be as honest as I can, and I hope in doing that, you might find good company here, and, as I always hope when I read anything at all, a bit less alone. My sense that the world we’re living in, with its promise and possibility of connection, has done so much to isolate us is not an original one. What I can offer here that’s original is me. There’s only one. To pinch Dave Pirner’s great lines, “I can go where no one else can go. I know what no one else knows.” He follows this with a cautionary “Here I am, just drowning in the rain”, lest we forget being wholly and originally ourselves is never without some risk.   

 instagram: @tracysondern

How to Support Your Spouse Through a Life Transition: 5 Tips to Stay Connected

To build a lasting relationship, you have to learn how to grow through change — together.

Every marriage will face moments of transition. Some are exciting: a new job, moving to a new city, or having a baby. Others feel more difficult: entering perimenopause, aging out of a career you once loved, or coping with loss or unexpected news. Some changes are anticipated. Others arrive without warning. And some aren’t changes at all — but the painful absence of something you hoped would happen.

Even if your partner is the one going through the shift, the ripple effects usually reach both of you. How you show up during these times — with empathy, patience, and support — can make the difference between growing apart and growing stronger.

Here are five ways to support your spouse through a life transition:

1. Stay Emotionally Connected

During times of change, emotional connection is your anchor. Make space for real conversations — not just check-ins about logistics, but invitations to share what’s really going on inside.

Try open-ended questions like:

“What’s been the hardest part of this so far?” or

“What are you most hopeful about right now?”

These kinds of questions show that you care about how your partner is feeling, not just what they’re doing. And they open the door for empathy, validation, and closeness — even when the future feels uncertain.

2. Encourage Their Growth — Even if It’s Uncomfortable

It’s normal for one partner to grow or change before the other. Maybe your spouse is stepping into a new identity — a student again after decades in a career, or a parent facing an empty nest. Maybe they’re grieving a “non-event” — something they hoped would happen, but didn’t.

Whatever the change, try to honor their growth without rushing it or minimizing it. Give each other permission to be in flux. And when the time is right, start imagining together what this next chapter could look like — not just practically, but emotionally and spiritually.

Ask yourselves:

“What kind of life do we want to build now?”

“What would feel meaningful to both of us?”

3. Breathe Through the Hard Parts

Change — especially the unanticipated kind — can stir up anxiety, resistance, or even depression. You might feel helpless watching your partner struggle, or frustrated by how long the transition seems to be taking.

In these moments, it helps to come back to your breath. A simple tool I often share with clients is box breathing:

• Inhale for 4 counts

• Hold for 4 counts

• Exhale for 4 counts

• Hold for 4 counts

Repeat this three times. It activates the calming part of your nervous system and helps you stay present — with yourself and with your partner — rather than reacting from fear or overwhelm.

4. Make Time for Joy and Connection

During transitions, routines change — and often, connection falls to the bottom of the list. But even small moments of joy and shared activity can help you both feel grounded and united.

Go for a walk. Cook together. Watch a favorite movie. Do something silly. Make time to laugh.

You don’t have to solve everything today. You just need to keep choosing each other, moment by moment.

5. Ask for Help When You Need It

Some transitions are simply too big to navigate alone. If you’re feeling stuck, distant, or unsure how to support one another, couples therapy can be a place to slow down, tune in, and rebuild your connection.

You don’t have to wait until things fall apart. Therapy can help you turn toward each other — with more compassion, understanding, and hope.

Change is part of every long-term relationship. But disconnection doesn’t have to be.

With curiosity, patience, and a willingness to grow, you and your partner can move through life’s transitions together — and come out stronger on the other side.