Planning for future can allay empty-nest anxiety

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/11/2020 (2160 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My husband is a very nice man. I know everything about him, but he knows very little about my past.

He married me as a very new widow, thinking that my relationship with my sick husband was all I had ever known. Actually, I had a very exciting life before I married anyone, but everything came crashing down.

My second husband is a sweet, shy, kind man, and a successful grain farmer. I needed his security, so he married me quickly. It was just fine by him, as he was lonely living far from town.

We’ve turned into a happy farm couple, with our children for company — and I love him deeply now. But both our kids will be leaving for university too soon and I’m already starting to panic at being stranded out here alone.

My husband doesn’t know what’s wrong with me when I panic for no apparent reason. He’s scared it’s him. I never want to leave him, but I am afraid of a yawning abyss, living way out here after our kids leave.

How can I fix my life, so I’m no longer scared of the kids going away? I know it’s natural for country kids to go away for school or training and I’m encouraging them to do that, but I’m so scared deep down inside. And don’t tell me to take anti-anxiety drugs. — Farmer’s Wife, southern Manitoba

Dear Farmer’s Wife: You will probably stop panicking once you have a plan. When it’s COVID-safe where you live, it’ll be time for you to get really engaged in town activities — arts, sports, charitable groups — and also to do some travelling.

Your husband, being a grain farmer, may have some time in the winter to go away. Right now, you can start researching about travel for the winter after this one.

Explain to him that when the kids are gone you’ll need to be involved in a much more active and social stage of your lives. And you need to start planning now, before the kids leave, so you can get yourself settled into a different way of life, maybe even a part time job.

Put your worried husband’s mind at ease by telling him you love him, but you are now in need of a situation where both of you expand your interests.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: Well, the second wave of COVID-19 is here with a vengeance, and I’m not sure how to get through this!

Summer passed pretty well with our cottage and the private beach, but we don’t go there in the winter. We usually curl, downhill ski and go on sunspot holidays.

We are intensely social people, and throw Christmas events at our house, and love to have the family and lots of people over for big dinners. We didn’t realize what a rich social life we had in the wintertime.

But as my English grandma said today when she heard about further COVID restrictions: “Now, bloody what?” — Bloody What Indeed! Southdale

Dear What Indeed: In wartime, people had their lives disrupted and threatened for years on end. We were short-sighted to have thought COVID-19 would be over in just a part of one year.

Here’s some advice for this winter: We get good snowfalls and not so much wet slush, so it’s time to take up snowshoeing, cross-country skiing or daily walking — things that naturally perk up your mood.

Further along, there’ll be skating on outdoor rinks and on rivers when the ice is thick and safe.

Indoors, it could be a good time for interior decorating (paint a coloured feature wall for pictures?), renovating, sewing and art projects.

If you don’t have any pets and sincerely want some, now is a good time to adopt them. They can be such good friends and you’d be helping each other with love, warmth and affection.

As for personal contact, make a phone contact list of people you want to talk to from your present and past, and get to it.

Now’s also the time to add more people to your Facebook friend list — people from previous neighbourhoods, your childhood, past workplaces, long lost relatives — and find out what they’re up to. (Be careful about adding old loves!)

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6.

Miss Lonelyhearts
Advice Columnist

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