When children grow up and leave home, the likelihood that their parents will get a divorce can increase. Divorce is on the rise among older adults, and what is often referred to as the “empty nest syndrome” is one reason that people in Florida may divorce.
Lack of connection
Raising a family can be all-encompassing. What happens with many couples who divorce after the children grow up and move away is that they discover they are no longer the same people who married two or more decades ago and that they have grown apart.
Hiding problems
When two people are largely focused on raising a family, they may ignore their own problems. Once the children are gone, they have no distractions, and the issues that they managed to avoid in the past may loom large.
Solutions
There are a few things couples can do to try to prevent the above situations. It can be helpful to understand the stresses and changes involved when the children leave home and prepare for them. This means not waiting until the children are out of the house to start reconnecting. This begins when the children are still in high school.
Parents can begin to talk about their expectations for what the marriage will be like in the years ahead. They can also start to take an interest in one another’s hobbies and make an effort to become more engaged in each other’s lives.
These solutions are not foolproof, and there are situations in which couples may agree that going their separate ways is the best way forward. When couples do divorce because they have grown apart, the process might be an amicable one. This could mean that instead of going to court to have a judge divide their property, they are able to negotiate this themselves.