Watching children head off to university is often a mix of pride and heartache for parents. It represents a huge milestone, a sign of success in raising them to independence. At the same time, it can leave parents reeling from the sudden loss of a role that once defined their daily lives—school runs, laundry piles, and evenings filled with after-school commitments.
For many couples, parenting has been the central thread in their relationship for years. When that role fades, even temporarily during term time, some parents find themselves wondering what’s left.
For a number of couples, the shift brings exciting possibilities—more freedom, time to socialize, or the chance to travel outside the school-holiday calendar. For others, it highlights the uncomfortable truth that their partnership, beyond parenting, has been left unattended. Without the glue of child-rearing, couples may realize they’ve grown apart, built separate routines, or developed different social circles.
It’s no surprise, then, that this stage of life often prompts couples to seek couples therapy. Relationship therapy can be a space to reconnect with what first drew them together, and to rebuild a sense of partnership beyond the parenting role. For those who became parents later in life, in their late thirties or forties, the so-called “empty nest” can feel especially significant, coming just as retirement looms on the horizon. Questions about how to spend that next chapter—together or apart—can bring old tensions to the surface. Rediscovering meaning in the relationship, rather than simply filling time, becomes crucial.
Interestingly, these challenges don’t always start with the last child leaving home. Take David and Penny, a couple with three children aged 18, 16, and 10. Their long focus on parenting meant their romantic bond had slipped into the background. For them, it wasn’t their youngest leaving but their eldest heading to university that stirred anxiety about the future—what would life look like once all three had grown up? And how would they face retirement as a couple?
Through couples therapy, David and Penny began to uncover shared values and mutual interests that had been sidelined for years, including a love of music and the arts. They also shifted how they viewed parenting—less about the daily grind, more about the satisfaction of raising their children well, even while acknowledging their different contributions as homemaker and breadwinner.
In the end, the transition of children leaving home doesn’t just signal the next step for them—it also invites couples to reflect, reassess, and, if they choose, rekindle what once brought them together.
(As always, names and details have been changed for confidentiality.)