I’m 57, and I’ve been married to my wife for 31 years. For most of that time, we were busy raising our two kids, working, paying the mortgage, and trying to keep everything moving. Our youngest moved out about three years ago, and that’s when I really started noticing how quiet our marriage had become.
My wife and I still get along. We don’t fight much, we have dinner together several nights a week, and we take care of each other when one of us is sick. From the outside, I suppose we probably look like a solid couple. But emotionally, I feel like something is missing.
We used to talk for hours about stupid things, plans for the future, movies, vacations, anything. Now most of our conversations are about bills, appointments, groceries, or what the kids are doing. We sit on the same couch at night, but she scrolls on her phone and I watch TV. Sometimes we go an entire evening barely speaking.
The strange part is that I’m not sure whether she feels the same way. I’m also embarrassed to bring it up because I don’t want her to think I’m blaming her or suddenly demanding that our marriage become romantic again overnight.
I love her, and I don’t want to throw away 31 years. I just miss feeling like we were a team instead of two people sharing a house.
Has anyone else gone through this after the kids left home? How did you find your way back to each other?
and then
I understand this more than I wish I did. I’m 61, and my wife and I went through something very similar after our daughter moved across the country. Suddenly, all the things that kept us busy disappeared, and we realized we had forgotten how to simply be together.
For a while, I thought the answer was planning some big romantic vacation. We eventually figured out that wasn’t what we needed. We started with something much smaller. Once a week, we went out for coffee without our phones. At first, it felt awkward because neither of us knew what to talk about.
Little by little, though, the conversations came back.
One thing that helped me was telling my wife, “I miss you,” instead of “We don’t talk anymore.” That sounds like a small difference, but it changed the whole conversation. She admitted she had been feeling lonely too, but she thought I was perfectly happy watching TV every night.
After 30-plus years together, I think it’s easy to assume you know what the other person is thinking.
You don’t have to fix everything at once. Start with one honest conversation and one small thing you can enjoy together. There’s still plenty of time to rediscover each other.