Thriving In Empty Nest, Alone But Not Lonely

February 23, 2020,

Visualizing our future in euphoric stages, this was supposed to be one of the better and more rewarding phases of our lives.

Too bad.

Sometimes it just doesn’t turn out that way.

As researched by the American Psychological Association, “In Western cultures, more than 90 percent of people marry by age 50. Healthy marriages are good for couples’ mental and physical health. They are also good for children; growing up in a happy home protects children from mental, physical, educational and social problems. However, about 40 to 50 percent of married couples in the United States divorce. The divorce rate for subsequent marriages is even higher.”

So, if you haven’t married by age 50, you probably never will.

If you get divorced, the second time around you have a higher probability of getting divorced again.

Many women have come to terms with being empty nest and divorced. In their dreams, it was not supposed to happen. Hard as it is to accept, they must.

But how do you move forward? How do you move on?

Not easy.

But you do need to, so it is important to come up with a plan.

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In our circle, Charlotte’s husband left her for another life after their children went off to college.

Talk about going through stages and phases, it appeared that Charlotte endured many of them,

She suffered through emotional pain, feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, embarrassment, financial loss and confusion to name just a few of her emotions.

Some friends tried to be there for her but many left.

When you are on top, as in many ways she was, you have a ton of friends.

Once you fall, not so much.

“Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce.”… P. J. O’Rourke

Over time, if you take constructive steps, something hopeful begins to happen. You become more accepting and comfortable of your situation. Charlotte became less angry and truly had no desire to have her ex-husband back.

She now was developing a new dynamic life of her own.

Charlotte also truly had no desired for something else.

Another marriage.

Another long-term relationship.

She did want to have fun. What kind of fun? Reminds us of a HBO television series.

Mrs. Fletcher is an American comedy miniseries based on the novel of the same name written by Tom Perrotta.

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The series stars Kathryn Hahn and has been given a series order by HBO.

Mrs. Fletcher is a coming of age story of Mrs. Eve Fletcher (Hahn) and her son.

Empty nest, Eve is a divorcée and is undergoing a mid-life crisis.

She decides she no longer wants to be her old self and experiences a sexual reawakening and sexual fulfillment that eluded her in her younger years.

Good for her. Kind of.

HBO adds, that the show is a dual coming-of-age story, exploring the impact of internet porn and social media on Eve Fletcher’s life.

Hmm. Empty nest and watching porn. Then acting upon it.

With our dear friend Charlotte, she previously was a member of organized religion and all of the conservative thought processes that goes with that, including having restrictive views about sexual relations, even in the marriage bed.

Sex was not viewed as recreational.

Now that Charlotte was free of both her husband and religion, similar to Ms. Fletcher, she became very interested in having sex.

Some of her other associates, not in our circle, kept probing Charlotte about sleeping with their husbands. They found her gorgeous and sexually held back. Now that she was free, she should have fun within their group, which in their minds, was safer than meeting strangers over the Internet.

It took a while but Charlotte finally agreed.

To be succinct, Charlotte participated for about a year, thoroughly enjoyed the experience but decided that in the long-term, that was not for her but she never regretted it.

Part of the reason she left was because she had begun to develop her clothing subscription product on her website and it took a few years but it was starting to take off.

She would meet attractive men from time to time who wanted to become involved with her but she was up front that she was so busy with her online business that she was lousy relationship material.

She truly had no time for a long-term relationship or a marriage. She also didn’t want to hop from one bed to another with strange men.

Her new business became her life and what her husband or children did no longer profoundly affected her.

We like that.

In our opinion, and in all fairness, experience too, so often divorced people have difficulty with being alone.

That doesn’t mean that they have to be lonely.

Still, they overwhelmingly feel that they should be dating or taking steps to get married again, sometimes in an effort to prove that the mate they parted with was wrong about them and this new, wonderful person in their life validates that.

We don’t see it that way.

Our experience is that it is better to take your time and evaluate what went wrong in your terminated marriage, why it went wrong and what responsibility did you have in propelling that to occur.

So much of empty nest is about discovering self. Alone. Without being lonely.

Many of your previous decisions were made with family in mind that at times did not reflect what you really wanted. Now before it is too late, you can take your time and find out what you really want out of life.

Sex with new and exciting people often masks or obstructs the new inward view.

The beautiful aspect of Charlotte’s new pathway, void of responsibilities to others, besides her customers, is how she is evolving and growing.

She is getting closer to sixty, have lost a few friends in death and now is very focused upon what she wants to do with the precious time that she has left.

Yes, visualizing our future in euphoric stages, this was supposed to be one of Charlotte’s better and more rewarding phases of her life. She initially thought it would be with a husband but it is not.

Having said that, when tragedy occurred, she found out that looking within for fulfillment instead of looking outward, made all of the difference in her new wonderful world.