Susan Dix Lyons: Just Us

Susan Dix Lyons shares how her relationship with her husband grew deeper over time.

I read something recently in my studies of clinical psychology that made me pause. Couples in general see their relationships improve after their children leave home. “Huh,” I thought.

This was not the “gray divorce” trend dominating more recent headlines. The divorce rate for people aged 50 and older has doubled since 1990, representing more than a quarter of all divorces today. But here I am.

For the past couple years, I’ve reeled between accepting my young adult children’s absence and something that has felt like a relapse into the nesting urges I had in the weeks before their arrivals as babies – cleaning their rooms, framing their diplomas and photos, plumping the pillows on their vacant beds.

The idea of anything improving in their wake felt weird and more than a little bit wrong.

When my husband and I decided to create a family, we didn’t think about how it would consume us for decades. We committed to this great work of our lives together, awed and terrified by the responsibility, chased by our own nagging histories, haunted by our missteps, seized by love. It upended our world. It became our world — molten, spinning, too magnetic to resist.

And sometimes, unsurprisingly, we lost each other along the way. Sometimes, in this important work, we forgot to center the very relationship that led to its riches.

But last week, my husband and I played pickleball. We rode our bikes together on the Napa Vine Trail and stopped in Calistoga for margaritas and calamari, staying way longer than we planned. And, yeah, we talked about our kids, a lot. How lucky we have been to have three to raise and love like mad even in the madness of it all.

So, yes. It’s true for me. My relationship with my husband has grown deeper and more certain during this forced return to our beginnings. I mean … wow. This lush history we have made together. This ripe future. The tears and anxieties and celebrations weaving us together through it all.

There is no one I would rather fill this absence with than us.

With a Perspective, I’m Susan Dix Lyons.

Susan Dix Lyons is a doctoral student in clinical psychology.