The empty nest...

Several of my female friends have seen their grown children leave home recently and they go on and on about how they are enjoying having their house to themselves. You know, how they can walk around the house naked or wearing really sloppy clothes and eat whatever and whenever they please and not have to listen to music they don't like and how they just love the quiet. They miss their kids and sometimes the kids come home for weekends and that's OK, but the women really are basking in their new-found privacy. There's that mother guilt thing, of course, but overall the women feel like some weight has been lifted, that they finally can stop taking care of others for a while and be selfish for a change.

Until this house, I never lived as an adult more than five years in one place. I've really nested here for the past nine years and I feel like my house is my coccoon, my safe harbor from the troubles "out there." I am comfortable and happy here, lucky me, as I know that the majority of the world's population might not have a roof over their heads tonight. I'm very grateful for this peace and quiet and safety, my private sanctuary.

But we look for a man to love and to love us and we have to think that some day he might want to share a living situation and we realize that it might be rather difficult to give up our space, share our nest with anyone else day after day. I hear how we get set in our ways, like that's just a mandatory part of growing older, this being less hospitable to a mate, compared to our younger days when we yearned for this togetherness. Is that all it is?

Does this have to do with space or emotional baggage? Like when we're together for a day and they say something they think is innocent and we feel that painful churning in our gut and we can't begin to figure why or what caused it. Like when we react to something with anger or hurt and we really can't explain what we're feeling or why. If we lived together, where would we go to run and hide? Where could we coccoon and pretend that no one else exists? If we lived together, where would we hide from ourselves? With a lifetime of painful experiences with men, would we ever feel safe and comfortable if they are around us all the time?

After all we've been through, are we really capable of being this close?