The question I’m a divorced woman in my 50s. My younger child, 23, left home five months ago, his 25-year-old sister having left a couple of years before, and my sense of grief is intermittent but vicious. This feels quite shocking at times and I’m hurt by how little my children contact me or come to see me. I have a busy life with a great circle of friends and an on-off boyfriend who lives elsewhere, but not a solid partner. The newly empty nest is setting off much guilt and rumination about my children’s childhoods, my marriage, even how often I visited my own parents.
I fully appreciate that my children are alive, independent and forging their own lives with work, friends and partners. I also make sure I have focus elsewhere, but I swing between feeling fine and busy, and really despairing. I sometimes wonder what the point of life is without my beloved children. I think: is this it? I know if I put pressure on them, they will go in the opposite direction. Neediness can be repulsive.
I barely gave my parents a thought at their age – I know this is normal. I question how much I’m a bad parent if they don’t want to see me a lot. I know in my heart that they love me, but they don’t want anything like the amount of contact I’d like. I’m finding the balance between their need for independence and my longing for them almost impossible to achieve. It feels like a deep grief that I can manage with effort, but which then almost topples me.
Philippa’s answer This is hitting you so hard because of the deep bonds you have with your children. Just because those bonds are beautiful. It doesn’t mean they aren’t a source of pain, too. I hope it helped to write it down like you did – writing is a good way to explore and express your feelings, and feelings such as these are better out than in.
You are adding to the sadness by torturing yourself with regrets. Those ruminations about their childhoods, your marriage and even how you were the same when you were their age regarding your own parents are feeding your sadness. Catch yourself when you start to play the regret game. Switch your focus to the positive memories and the good times you shared with your children. The fact that they are busy, happy and lead independent lives tells you an important thing: you are a good enough parent – and that’s as good as it gets for any of us. No parent is perfect. They have internalised your love and happily take it for granted. It is important, too, that our children find out who they are without us. They need to find their own people – this is our biology, because if they remained dependent upon us for company, they would not be able to manage after we died and hopefully, with a bit of luck, we are going to die first.
You remind me of me when my daughter went away to university; the wrench was hard to bear. I’d go and give a talk in a bookshop for half a dozen people, just as an excuse to go to her city – eight hours travel to sell two books! Of course, that wasn’t the reason I was there, but I got really down if I went longer than four weeks without seeing her. She, of course, was fine with the distance and the gaps between us seeing each other.
Like you, I didn’t want to seem needy either. But I came clean, I just told her straightforwardly – unless I see you once every four weeks the pining becomes unbearable. Can I come up, take you out to dinner, stay the night in a bed and breakfast, and then go home again? Of course, she didn’t mind and indulged me. If you come clean, matter-of-factly, say it like it is, rather than pleading on your knees, it isn’t repulsive neediness, it is just how you feel and it will be news to them and they really won’t mind being treated to dinner, or going on a walk. You don’t have to manufacture “work” in their home town like I did at first.
You could also ask to set up a routine for seeing them, a fortnightly dinner or a weekly phone call. Be clear about it being for your sake, and I think they’ll indulge you. What may have stopped you doing this is the very strength of your feelings and your being shocked by how strongly you miss them, and you didn’t want to dump that on them. It’s not a dump if you can communicate what you need in a non-manipulative manner.
It seems your children are the people closest to you. If your relationship with your boyfriend develops, or if you find a new love relationship, you’ll have a new primary relationship, but for now this is a vacancy in your life and while it was filled with your children you probably didn’t notice it that much. This might account for some of the longing you feel. It seemed your children also supplied some of the meaning you made of your life. Until new meanings emerge for you around your life, there will be something of an existential void you will need to feel before you can experience it as what we therapists call “another bloody fucking opportunity for personal growth”.
Every week Philippa Perry addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader.
If you would like advice from Philippa, please send your problem to askphilippa@guardian.co.uk. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions
