Empty nest can prompt reconnection or separation for some long-term couples

After 32 years of children in the home, 54-year-old Shayla Dugan of Glendale, Ariz., became an empty nester in May when her youngest son moved into his first house, leaving her and her husband alone for the first time since 1991. Ms. Dugan said the couple had “kind of drifted apart,” with him becoming a Boy Scout dad and her a soccer mom; as their children left she began pursuing fiction writing and published her first book in 2024, while her husband now fishes, tends chickens and supports her work.

Other couples have taken different approaches: Patricia Wooster, 53, rented a cabin for a month after dropping her last child at college and said she and her husband spent a year preparing and “putting in a lot of work to get to know each other.” Therapists and researchers describe the transition as fraught for some couples.

Michael Glavin, a couples therapist in Chicago, said couples can feel alone inside a shared history and recommended setting aside time together and keeping separate interests. A 2017 Pew Research Center study, the article noted, found the rate of so-called gray divorce among adults 50 and older has roughly doubled since the 1990s, and a 2023 study in The Journal of Marriage and Family reported that as of 2019 about 36 percent of couples who divorced were 50 or older.

Key Topics

Culture, Empty Nest, Shayla Dugan, Glendale Arizona, Gray Divorce, Pew Research Center