Be Happy Empty Nesters

Feeling nervous about joining other empty nesters? Lost now that the kids are gone? Do you know what to talk about anymore when there aren't kids around - or at least an endless array of issues with kids to talk about? Marriage issues revolving around the empty nest are often easily solvable, and this eHow article will show you how simple it can be. Remember, that it's often not a permanent "problem," but simply a temporary transition.

Transitions can be uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean you're doing something wrong during discomfort. Plus, they lead to better times and situations. Here's how to make many empty nesters' marriage issues a gateway to something fantastic.

1. Make an appointment. Make yourself whole and happy, and you'll be more attractive and a better partner to your spouse, who is probably also feeling uneasy in the empty nesters' club. Make an appointment with your doctor or natural healer (and hopefully one for your partner as well), to have your hormones checked, and then balanced - whether that be via natural or supplement methods such as dhea, mangosteen and fish oils, or with a doctor's prescription. It can be like walking out of a cloud you never realized you were in, into the sunshine. Many marriage issues can be solved by this one first step.

2. Turn a lost dream into a hobby. As empty nesters, you're no longer strapped to babysitter's schedules or being afraid to stay away from home knowing a teen party may be in the making. Still focusing on yourself as a confident, energetic and interesting partner for your spouse, think of a lost childhood or even adulthood dream or missed career and find a hobby-sized replacement you never had time for before. If it might also interest your partner, all the better, but start with yourself and attract by example. Did you always want to perform on a stage as a singer? Join a choir that performs. Wish you would have been a winning athlete? Join a running or bicycling club and work your way into age-based competitions. Never became the famous fashion designer? Take a quick, easy knitting workshop at a local fiber shop and start a line of personally designed scarves to give as gifts and perhaps sell online. High interest activities can reset your brainwaves and the image you project from inside to remembering the feeling that the sky's the limit.

3. Begin to reconnect with your partner with games and projects. These act as a catalyst for the elephant in the room - the extra time now that you don't have to make dinner for four or fix the teen's car, and allow you to focus (remember) on fun together instead of concern over the kids, which became the tie that kept you in union. Ask your partner to play a quick game of cards such as May I or rummy after dinner. Purchase a new board game for adults that calls for cooperation instead of competition, or choose a fun project such as painting a second-hand garden cart a new color, plant a kitchen garden, or wash both cars together inside and out to where they sparkle like new.

4. Start a new "hobby with a mission" or home sideline business together. Unless already taken care of in step one, add a hobby that has a future goal to replace your nights of negotiating with homework for your kids' future goals. Meaning, rather than just randomly making candles together for no real reason, decide the next year's holiday and birthday gifts will all be (or include) handmade candles created by the two of you. Don't just learn to make jam from local u-picks in your kitchen together, decide you'll make them in a rented certified kitchen to be part of a local shop's retail items. Become a team with a new mission. It will feel familiar to handle challenges together, but now they're for the two of you.

5. Do sex differently. You no longer have to hide your sex life or wait until the kids aren't around. Remember pre-children romance? Bring it back. Choose a new place in the house to be intimate, walk naked or half naked right out into the living room, sneak into the shower with your spouse, connect intimately before work or before dinner instead of late at night "after the kids are in bed," read up on tantra sex and try a few moves. As one example, tantra is often more about deep connection rather than recreation, and gazing in each others' eyes while deep breathing in rhythm for a set amount of time (such as 60 seconds) can create a bond deeper than you may have ever experienced.

6. Make new connections together. Always cherish the old friends, but add new ones that represent new doors opening rather than reminding you of the rut of constant child-raising. You're now free to join mutually interesting clubs, take workshops, go to events or volunteer. Look through your newspaper to see announcements for places you'd enjoy together and might also find new friendships. Your teens can no longer make fun of your love of renaissance fairs and send photos of you in costume across cyberspace to other disapproving and sympathetic teens. Instead, you can now mingle with others who love them as much as you do, surprisingly, some of whom are teens.

7. Make evening dinners new and different. Welcome to the freedom of empty nesters. You no longer have to avoid gourmet because the kids' didn't like it or hide your strange desire to eat dessert first because you don't want to pass the habit onto the kids. If you like steak and your spouse likes tofu - you can now have two dinners at one meal. At least once a week, have a rules-breaking dinner at home that you never had with the kids to add new energy to the house.

8. Charm and pursue. Did you forget these old tricks? They still work. Tell him what you admire about him, his hard work, how handsome he still is to you, how he protected you from the salesman who came to the door by answering it for you. Tell her how she can still turn you on, how beautiful she still is to you and how her eyes are still the color they were when you first met. Then ask questions, probing questions you haven't had time for, such as, which age of the kids did you like the most? Enjoy the least? Why?

9. Do all of the above in balance. Be sure not to use a new hobby or business of your own as a way to avoid your partner, or insist on being gone to new events and with other people all the time without ever remembering how to have quiet, romantic moments together with just the two of you. Once you cross the bridge back to together, it won't be the same as it was when you were young and child-free and building your first nest together, it will be much, much better and the empty nest can become a castle of fulfillment.

Article source: ehow.com

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