Empty Nests Support Group
Empty nest syndrome is a general feeling of depression and loneliness that parents/other guardian relatives feel when one or more of their children leave home. Empty nest syndrome has become more prevalent in modern times, as the extended family is becoming less common than in past generations, and the elderly are left living by themselves.
My son left for University this September and I cant believe how much pain I'm in and it doesn't seem to be easing.
I did not expect to feel this way as a single parent to just him we where very close when he was younger but grew apart when the teenage years and computer games, friends became his priority. He disappeared to his room even for meals and I rarely set eyes on him. It was a difficult time and I should not have let it get so bad - but I am a guilt ridden person and I just wanted him to be happy and this is what he wanted. Now I look back with regret I should have meals times ours ask for him to come out of his room occasionally - its my biggest regret. He is a wonderful young man funny bright, independent a joy to be around. The last year was better not at home but he started to want to spend time with me outside the home and I loved and treasured it. But just as the teenage years were ending and we started to re-connect he left and I feel robbed is that wrong?
I am happy for him he hates the area we live and always wanted to move to London which he has done, his life is so full and he has direction in his life its what I want for him but does he have to forget me on such a level? He rarely contacts me - some times ignores my texts or calls it feels like is the most considerate person until it comes to me and it really hurts.
He came home for Christmas but its made me feel worse and its like day one of him leaving again and the pain is a raw as the day he left - will it get better what did you do?
I did not expect to feel this way as a single parent to just him we where very close when he was younger but grew apart when the teenage years and computer games, friends became his priority. He disappeared to his room even for meals and I rarely set eyes on him. It was a difficult time and I should not have let it get so bad - but I am a guilt ridden person and I just wanted him to be happy and this is what he wanted. Now I look back with regret I should have meals times ours ask for him to come out of his room occasionally - its my biggest regret. He is a wonderful young man funny bright, independent a joy to be around. The last year was better not at home but he started to want to spend time with me outside the home and I loved and treasured it. But just as the teenage years were ending and we started to re-connect he left and I feel robbed is that wrong?
I am happy for him he hates the area we live and always wanted to move to London which he has done, his life is so full and he has direction in his life its what I want for him but does he have to forget me on such a level? He rarely contacts me - some times ignores my texts or calls it feels like is the most considerate person until it comes to me and it really hurts.
He came home for Christmas but its made me feel worse and its like day one of him leaving again and the pain is a raw as the day he left - will it get better what did you do?
Like you I am full of regret and guilt over my 'failings' as a parent - if only I'd done this differently, we'd still be close, etc. beating myself up and wishing I could do it all again differently. But really I think it's just his personality and his age - he's a fun-loving, happy young guy and I'm a boring, serious old frump. Maybe in 10 years or so, when he's boring and miserable himself, he'll gravitate back to good old mum?
I think it's a long waiting game really, from now on - the more pressure I put on him, the faster and further he'll run from me. So I am trying to LIGHTEN UP (my new motto, written on my desktop), have faith in our relationship, forgive him for taking me for granted and hurting my feelings. Still living for him basically - I'm decorating the house just to impress him (and he was actually impressed - score!)
Really I need to go through the grieving process so I can 'move on', but I guess I'm still in denial about the fact that it's over. Is it over? Will it ever be over? Some days, like today, I think it is, and after crying all day I find this forum, which is reassuring in a way - at least it's normal here, to be a bit of a mess when your child grows up and leaves you - it's like a bereavement, but complicated by continuing hope and fear of failure. I think we have to go easy on ourselves - and go easy on them.
I feel everything that you stated. Sorrow, hope for a future, but feeling like I have failed. At times I feel better about the relationship between my son and myself; and then today, he just crushes me with being taken for granted, ignoring me, paying more attention to frisbee golf and his friends. It is painful to feel like you have just been pushed to the side and are never thought of again -- or at least very rarely thought of. It is no replacement for that attention for them, but I have to come here so that I do not feel alone. I don't think either of my sisters or my friends can understand. I so wish life as different and I could go back several years to change things. It just hurts all the time, especially iin the evenings when I am coming home and know he will not be here and weekends.
Very complicated *sigh* - but we enter a new phase in life - the 'winding down' phase - the hardest bit is over! And yes you feel like a rudderless boat for a while - our children give us a clear sense of purpose, and usually limit our choices quite a bit when they are living at home. Suddenly anything is possible, and it's confusing and uncomfortable - and we really REALLY miss them so much - it's tough. I think it must be even harder when you have to go to work and carry on with other duties too - I've had it easy being at home, able to shut myself away and cry if I feel like it. If someone dies, we get 'compassionate leave' from work more often than not - at least for a couple of days. Our kids leave home and everyone, including our kids, tells us how great it is! That is harsh.
Would you be able to take a week off work after your twins leave, just so you can wallow and cry and reminisce in peace for a while? I think it would help if you have some time and privacy to grieve the end of an era, and what is a big loss to you as a mother, and a difficult time when we all have to essentially reinvent ourselves and plod on, pretending we're thrilled with our new-found freedom, rather than totally lost! xxx
And then it ends. We are no longer in charge, we no longer make decisions, are responsible and we knew that this time would come. That knowledge, that this will end some day, that is there in the back of our mind from way before we are the lucky ones knowing that we are about to embark on this journey, being a parent! Yes, we knew that!
We too left home and moved on to make use of all we learned from our parents. We had become independent and oh how we longed well before that time to spread out our wings and feel the draft carry us on to our future. We had planes, we had dreams and hopes and among them there may have been the dreams of too one day become a parent. We planned on how we would handle that, some of us planned hard on how we were not going to make the " mistakes" our parents made, we were going to be more understanding for sure, and we would not meddle in our kid's life as much, and, yes, we would allow them to be independent, not hold on so tight that they'd feel, like some of us did, chocked, unable to take a step without our parents still wanting a say in everything we wanted to try, and some other's never able totally trust that we would use what they taught us, be responsible.
I remember well how I was positive that I would never be as bad as my parents, they just didn't understand that I had to learn by my own actions, I had to make my own mistakes, because that is actually the only way we as the human race progress, grow and develop ;-) I didn't know that fact back than, but learned it as my life expanded and I became more interrested in us as race rather than just of myself as an individual.
But before that wisdom found a way to sink in, I too had to learn the hard way that simply because I had certain planes did not mean that setting them into action couldn't and wouldn't cost a huge price. A price too steep to pay at the time it came due. Nore had I idea that good planing was a bad thing, I thought that it was the responsible thing to do. And it is!
I had always planed on not being a meddling mother, on teaching my son all I could until that time came when he himself had to draw on that to make his own decisions. And he would have to succeed or fail by his own decisions. I had planned on him taking a break from school for a year, because he did not like school it was all too easy and boring, leave home and fend for himself so that I could still be able to help if help was needed and then when he went off to college someplace distant he and I would know that he could take care of himself. I talked about it with him often, and there was no objection ever voiced, it was not a setfast - this is what you are going to do, period, I discussed it with him, explained what my thinking was. Eventually we started talking about him possibly going to my home in Europe to do an apprenticeship, which he was entitled to because he had dual citizenship. I always thought that the opportunity was something he should seriously consider, an opportunity that would maybe not present itself at later time. Well, that's what we did.
I thought my heart would shatter when the plane took off with my only son on board! I had no idea how much this lifetime development would affect our lives then and today. The year he spent overseas was possibly, I thought than, the most difficult time I would ever suffer through. I went and surprised him on his birthday showing up at the establishment he did his apprenticeship as Maettre'D at, for dinner, all prearranged with his master teacher. Was that ever awsome? It certainly was the greatest birthday surprise!
You can't imagine just how much worse it was afterwards when I was back home, miles overseas. It felt as painful as loosing someone in death. I was in mourning, I missed him so much and was not even alone I was married.
Now moving forward many years later, my son came back a success and full of experiences which will last and benefit him forever, he had formed friendships, learned how to live responsibly, made his own mistakes and learned much more than he could have ever imagined. Yes it had taken some time to adjust and learn alot new stuff, but he was not alone he had alot of family over there, all people he knew from birth. But, and this is such an incredible but, he harbers a deep resentment, believing that I THREW him out of my life and made him fend for himself in a country he did not fully understood, language difficulties and customs he was not as familiar with as the ones he grew up in. Some 20+ years ago he threatened me with bodely harm, bodylanguage not words, and threw me out of his home I had been visiting on his invitation, and then a few days later justified the actions with: " well you threw me out of your home back then and to a whole lot worse place then this....". Say what!? I THREW you out of my home? I was stunned, shocked, I had no idea that he felt that way, ever. He never said anything negative about the experience, takled about his experiences.
The past and all the great intentions had suddenly come crashing down and crushing me and my life as I knew it. I have only seen my son once since, at his wedding. There is more to this of course. But suffice it to say, if I thought that having my son in another country learning and experiencing life as an adult was difficult, loosing him completely, for ever is worse still. But, and there is always a but, he is still alive and doing okay as far as I know, he does not live far from my home, he could be dead and worse, I believe that would be far worse. It is bad but I always have hope, you never know what will happen next.
I am very ill and old now, and have gone through some very hard times all alone, cancer for one, a seriouse illness chronic for another and can just barely fend for myself, am homebound and bedridden most of the time, which is really terrible when I have a family only 20 min from my home.
I worry too, about what will happen to my son's conscious when I die and he doesn't even know until the notice of a will shows up and he has missed so much time, so many opportunities to make things right. All though I have forgiven him a long time ago it will take acceptance of responsibility toward ones parent and for his anger issues as well as the serious problems with his wife's disrespect and verbal abuse towards me to 're-established an acceptable relationship. I don't think that this will happen before my time is up.
Something like that can really destroy someone, that kind of guilt can be terrible.
I cry some time, like when I am writing this, but I keep a hope light burning, you just never know.....:-)
So hang in, it is hard and it hurts, but nobody promised an easy life. Most of all, keep hoping while you wait for the miracle to happen. And there is nothing wrong with caring it cleanses the heart and soul.
So due to my experience growing up, I tried to give my son what I never had - family support. And guess what - he turns out to be more like my mother in his personality! He found me smothering! It seems a common mistake to give your children what you wanted as a child, regardless of what they want as individuals.
Something which explained so much to me, and really helped my son to forgive me is this book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Third-Culture-Kids-Experience-Growing/dp/1857885252/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466227330&sr=8-1&keywords=third+culture+kids which I would urge you and your son to read, as you are both 'third culture kids' - we apparently struggle a great deal with close personal relationships due to our rootless upbringing and continual experience of loss and grief as children. My father is also a 'third culture kid' and it explained a lot about my own childhood too, and my parents seeming lack of attachment to me.