Fearlessly Facing Fifty And Beyond

EP:205 Empty Nest Marriage: Rediscovering Connection with Jim Burns

• Amy Schmidt • Season 3 • Episode 205

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Jim Burns returns to discuss how couples can reinvent their marriage after children leave home, exploring the unexpected challenges and opportunities of the empty nest phase.

• Empty nest can be challenging as couples suddenly have more time together after years of child-focused living
• The "gray divorce" phenomenon is increasing among those over 50, often due to neglected marriages during child-raising years
• Communication needs reinvention in each marriage phase, particularly when entering the empty nest
• Four powerful questions to discuss: What's working? What's not working? What's confusing? What's missing?
• Creating a dream list together helps couples envision and plan their next chapter
• "Thank therapy" transforms relationships through intentionally practicing gratitude
• Emotional intimacy precedes physical intimacy, requiring intentional effort from both partners
• Three reflective questions: Do I like who I'm becoming? Is my heart for God growing? Am I giving my spouse only emotional scraps?
• Couples may spend more years together after children leave than they did raising children

For more information on empty nest marriage and Jim's resources, visit Homeward.com and check out his books and podcasts "Homeward with Jim Burns" and "Embracing Your Season."

Connect with Jim Here

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Fearlessly Facing Fifty and Beyond has over 200 episodes with inspiration and stories to age fearlessly and connect confidently to others thriving at midlife and beyond.

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Ready to FEARLESSLY FACE all the F WORDS – be inspired and encouraged?

Get a copy of Amy’s Best selling book: CANNONBALL! FEARLESSLY Facing Midlife and Beyond here

Fearlessly Facing Fifty and Beyond has over 200 episodes with inspiration and stories to age fearlessly and connect confidently to others thriving at midlife and beyond.

Make sure to share with friends and family and would love if you could leave a review. There are so many shows out there floating around and if you are finding value in the Fearlessly Facing Fifty podcast share it with the world – a review means so much.

And don’t forget to follow along on all the socials:

http://instagram.com/theamy.schmidt

https://www.instagram.com/fearlesslyfacingfifty_fwords/

https://www.facebook.com/fearlesslyfacingfifty/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-schmidt-a5684412/

Speaker 1:

Hey, fearless friends, it's Amy Schmidt and I am excited to be back with today. Our effort is faith and we are digging into fearlessly facing faith in our relationships. And you know what? Today's guest is a pretty superhuman. I've had him on before and we talked about emerging adults and relationships with adult kids.

Speaker 1:

Today we're going to be digging into marriage as empty nesters. Kids. Today we're going to be digging into marriage as empty nesters, and that's a big topic because we all know relationships change. So today on the show is Jim Burns. He's the founder of Homeward. He speaks to thousands of people around the world each year and has more than 3 million resources in print in over 20 languages.

Speaker 1:

I'm so excited to welcome Jim back to the show. So, jim, welcome to Fearlessly Facing 50 and Beyond, as we fearlessly face our faith and relationships. Well, fearless friends, we're back and, as I said in the introduction, this is a repeat guest for me. I absolutely adore this human. I've never met him in person but we've had a conversation. I follow everything that he does and they do over at Homeward and I just think he's amazing. And today we're digging into kind of marriage in the empty nest. So, jim Burns, welcome back.

Speaker 2:

Amy, it's so good to be with you and I'm actually a big fan of yours and so love being with you anytime. I love it, I'm yours here anytime.

Speaker 1:

I love it and you know I said to Jim before we started recording. I said, yeah, my husband said so, amy, who do you have on today? And I'm like, oh, three interviews. You know we usually do three on Wednesdays. And oh, jim Burns is coming on. What are you talking about, am? And I'm like, oh, we're talking about marriage in the empty nest. He's like, oh man, all right, I'll make a dinner reservation so he knows that we're going to have some conversations, some great, tangible takeaways for all of our listeners and viewers. So first thing is, empty nest is tough anyway. Let's be honest, right, it's tough. Mine are grown and flown. I know you've lived through this. There is a part of the relationship. Now I've been married for 32 years Some listeners, it'll vary, certainly but all of a sudden you're at this point where you're kind of looking at each other at the dinner table and you're like, wow, you've been like spinning in different orbits for so long, keeping all these plates in the air, and now you're together and you're like, wow, okay, who is this person?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, that's exactly right, I mean, and that was for Kathy and me too. Here I speak on this, I write on this, but yet when Heidi, our youngest, went away to college, wow, we got back home and we kind of looked at each other across the table and said, well, what are we going to do with the rest of our life? So we hadn't prepared. And I find, amy, that a lot of people have buried things under the mat about their marriage, especially because they've been busy trying to get teenagers out of the house, get the towels off the floor, deal with all those other issues, and if the people have not worked on their marriage prior, they seem to have a really tough landing into the empty nest. If they have been working on it, it seems to be a little bit easier.

Speaker 2:

For Kathy and I, we just simply weren't prepared. I always say that Kathy was the sun. The girls I have all daughters were the kind of planets revolving around the sun. At home I'm revolving around the sun and all of a sudden she didn't have a job, so she didn't know what to do, and I didn't exactly know what to do either. So we started experiencing the empty nest syndrome and in that we realized that affected our marriage. So we need to reboot the marriage. We need to reinvent some of the disciplines that we actually knew better to do and that helped us greatly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean we do have to do better and be better and we had that same thing and you know, I mean you have all this time together. Now it's like, wow, how do you use this time to really you know? And certainly, what is? I don't know the exact statistic, but isn't it more than 50% of marriages? They call it gray divorce.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know that's the in this demographic. The demographic of 50 and over is the biggest demographic of divorce right now and we didn't see that literally 20 years ago. But we are seeing that today and I think that's because we weren't putting energy into our marriage. We were putting energy just into the kids, being child-focused, and that's not a good thing. And then what happens is because you have all this time, you've got to figure out just how to do it.

Speaker 2:

We were with a couple this weekend I was speaking in Sun Valley, idaho, suffering, and we were at their house and they're great friends of ours, are on our board and she goes. He's driving me crazy because he just follows me around and I have things to do. My husband is so busy this is a man of high capacity and does great things with work but he's just following around. Then he's rearranging the dishwasher when I put him in and it's driving me crazy, jim. And again, we just don't know. We have to reinvent the way we do marriage. We have to reinvent the way we deal with our kids. We have to reinvent a lot of stuff and we're going to be married as empty nesters, sometimes for many of us longer than we were with kids in the house. That's what's remarkable.

Speaker 1:

Wow, I didn't really think about that, but that is so true. Yeah, if you think, about it.

Speaker 2:

The average empty nest is 48.9 years. That's when you go into the empty nest that wasn't for Kathy and me, but it is for a lot of and then you start looking at it and you go, wow, if you live to be kind of the average age, you're in the empty nest a long time.

Speaker 1:

So wow, that's really. I didn't even think about that, I just wrote it down. So let's walk through that. I can relate to that. I'm sure a lot of people listening can. You know you're kind of feeling like he's following you around. You kind of feel like you're, maybe, you know, getting stuff out of the laundry and want to watch TV and he's right there Like what can we do? What are some tangible takeaways? This might be personal, actually, you know, let's just talk about what are some things we can do. Do we need to initiate discussions?

Speaker 2:

boundaries. What is it? Yeah, no, I think. No, I think you have to talk about it. Here's what I'm hoping happens.

Speaker 2:

Here's, let's talk about the evenings these days, because it used to be that, you know, we were still running after kids and doing all this. So you know, how do we want to do some of this? What's a great evening for you? What are your needs? If you're still like Kathy likes to work at night and I'm pretty much just dust after a time period, and so I had to get used to the fact that she wasn't going to come in and sit by me and snuggle. She was going to go in her little office and she teaches a Bible study on Tuesdays, and I think she does it most nights. She's's working on that stuff or she does our finances, and I had to realize that, oh, I need to come up with some other things to do, and that was a good thing. So we actually had that conversation and she said do you want me just to stop what I'm doing or redo it? And I said you know what? Not necessarily, but we had some good conversations about that. I find that that's the secret. The secret is what do you need? What do you want, what's working, what's not working, what's confusing? You know there's four questions that I like to ask. You know what's working? Um, in the empty nest, what's not working in the empty nest, uh, what's confusing and what's missing? And I, we've had that conversation.

Speaker 2:

It's funny Cause I sometimes do that at marriage conferences. I'll say that and then I'll say why don't you take a? You know, get in your as couples and say it? Kathy always wanders up to me and goes well, let's us do it. I said well, we just did it. You know, a month ago she goes we need to do it again, but I find that those are be hurtful and so we just don't do it.

Speaker 2:

And you know, communication is a learned trait. You know, neil Clark Warren is a founder of eHarmony and he's been a marriage mentor of mine for a long, long time. He's actually, before he was the eHarmony founder guy, he was a seminary professor on marriage and he said to me one day I was talking about Kathy and me I said I'm like my dad and she's like her mom, and that would have been World War III. And he said well, jim, communication is a learned trait. Just like a mentor would say, or a coach, get it together here, and so we found that we had to learn how to re-communicate at each phase of our marriage. So we were communicating in a certain way when we first got married and that was both good and hard because we didn't know how to do it. Then the kids come in and now we're just trying to juggle and stay awake while they're doing the diapers and things like that.

Speaker 2:

The next phase, then the teenage phase, is harder for a lot of marriages in fact, and then when you get into the empty nest, it's a whole reinvention, like I was saying. But the communication style is a whole new invention too, and what we tend to do then is we just get set in our ways and we get lazy and we don't, you know, lean into it. So even those kinds of questions, what's missing? You know I don't want to have Kathy tell me that I'm being a louse on this or that, but if I say that and she says, well, you know what, what I'd like more of, and I, you know, and I tell people all the time look at you.

Speaker 2:

I was talking to a lady last weekend in Sun Valley when I was speaking, and she said my husband is not spontaneous. He doesn't know what I want. He's not being romantic enough, empty nester. And I said, well, have you told him what you need? And she goes. Well, no, he's supposed to know that I go. Oh, we men are not that good, right, they don't know, you need to tell him what you need.

Speaker 2:

She said well, give me an example. I said well, my wife, after all of these years of marriage, we'd like to go to the movies and I always hold her hand. And I think that's kind of cool, holding her hand through the movies. I mean, anybody would think that One day she goes. You know, jim, you always hold my hand, but I want you to put my arm around her. About 30 minutes later my arm is dead. I don't know that. Sometimes women understand us men having to go through that pain. So I take it off, I kind of go back to holding her hand and she just takes my hand and moves it around her shoulders and she showed me what I needed to do. Well, guess what, every time I go to the movies now I've kind of figured it out my arm isn't dead and she's getting what she wants. But also I'm getting what I want because I want to please her.

Speaker 2:

I just don't know how to do it and you know it's years ago somebody wrote a book on. You know, women are from Mars and men are from Venus and vice versa.

Speaker 1:

I can't remember it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you know, we need to have our spouses tell us what we need. And with Kathy, sometimes I need to be able to say because she comes in the morning, I'm up really early. She gets up early, but not as early as me, and she'll just want to chit-chat and she's seen the news already and she wants to talk about it. I'm already into, I'm doing my devotions, I'm doing work mode and finally I had to say one day, you know, kathy, do I need to go? We have an office at the house. I don't use it very often, but do I need to go to the office because I really need to get this stuff done? And yet, at the same time, I feel like I'm not showing you honor. When you're talking about what's going on in the war or whatever it might be, it's important to her, it's important to me, it's just not important at that moment, right? So I think it goes back to that communication stuff, communication Key. I mean what's working, what's not working.

Speaker 1:

What's? Confusing and what's missing those four questions right there. I mean that's what we should have conversations about tonight everybody listening, because those are four key things that can really be helpful.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to give a warning, though, amy, that there are times when people have those conversations and there's a fight or two that goes on when they say what's missing or people go. I can't think of anything that's really working, but I want to tell you what's missing. Don't do that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yep, you said something and I read it somewhere. These three things Do I like the person I'm becoming. Is my heart for God shrinking or growing? Am I giving my spouse and my children only my emotional scraps?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a big one for me, all three of those. I actually have that in my journal. In fact, just on the other side here in the podcast studio I have those questions kind of embedded in the journal. But I know how I'm doing.

Speaker 2:

If I like the person I'm becoming, if I'm too busy and I think a lot of times, even in the empty nest, we have all this time now but we tend to fill time without really putting time and energy into our marriage or whatever else. So if I like the person I'm becoming, I'm probably doing pretty good. If I don't like the person I'm becoming, I'm probably too busy. And busy people are broken people. We always talk about busyness as a sign of success, but overly busy families are broken. Overly busy marriages are broken. In fact, john Mark Comer just said and I love this quote hurry is violence to your soul. Well, if that's the case, you're not going to like yourself if you're in that place. And then the next one for me is so key Is the work of God I'm doing, destroying the work of God in me.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 2:

I say that as a person who's in ministry, but another way of saying it is my heart for God growing or shrinking. Well, you know what? My heart for God is usually growing if I'm in a better place personally on my own, and I can then be much better for my wife, kathy. Right, if my heart is shrinking and sometimes it's because I'm just overly busy I remember I went on radio years and years ago and a friend of mine who was my accountability partner, I said, wow, we always ask that question. I said, well, it's kind of shrinking right now because I'm really busy and everybody thought it was wonderful. There was a million people a day listening to me and blah, blah, blah. And he said, jim, if your heart for God is shrinking, then you need to get off radio, you need to do whatever it takes. It was almost like a panic for him and instead of going, you're going to work through this. You're awesome, things are good, and I really appreciated somebody looking me in the eye and saying don't let your heart shrink.

Speaker 2:

I think too many people make really poor choices when their heart's shrinking, and then that last one is probably the one I think about the most. Am I only giving Kathy my emotional scraps. Why am I doing that? I worked all weekend speaking in Sun Valley, got a trip here in Wisconsin coming up this weekend. I'm not going to give them my emotional scraps, so why do I come home and give Kathy my emotional scraps? Now again, it's home, it's a sanctuary. Sometimes that happens. But if we're doing that all the time and then I even found that out with my kids when they were in the home that there were times when I would just pass, I would talk to them, I would try to have a good conversation, but it'd be short because I need to keep moving on. That's not what I need to do. I need to make sure that I have time and room to give them my emotional best. I think that's a key.

Speaker 2:

And again those three questions are really helpful.

Speaker 1:

I'm writing those down because I think that's so. Those three things are very powerful. You know, we talk a lot about child-focused marriages when the kids are little because you know, we're taking them everywhere, we're taking them to sports, we're play groups, all of this.

Speaker 2:

But there also can be too much child-focused marriages right in the empty nest. Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean. What I'm finding right now is that when I wrote the book Doing Life With your Adult Children keep your mouth shut.

Speaker 1:

I'll talk about that.

Speaker 2:

Excellent book. Excellent book which pretty much tells you what's in the book. But when I found out that most of us were fretting and worrying and in shock that our kids and for many people their kids were violating values, they were straying from faith, and so that takes on a whole new stress mode to a marriage. And that doesn't mean that we ignore our adult children, but just like we're reinventing our marriage, we are also reinventing our relationship with our kids. And in the book Empty Nest, one of the things I say is, when your kids go off and have new experiences, then you follow their example and you have some new experiences, have some new experiences with your spouse. And so you know, kathy and I wrote down our dream list, and our dream list wasn't just go to Sicily. We wanted to go to Sicily. We could now afford Sicily, because before that we were putting braces on people's teeth and all those kinds of things. But the point being, what is our dream list? What do we want to make these next years look like? I know that sounds so unromantic, but those were the conversations that were really helpful. We went on a drive for about well, a drive. It was like a 10-day drive and we went up the California coast and Kathy had a yellow notebook and I had one, even though I was driving. I didn't write it during that time and we just started dreaming and you know what? It was really cool. We're just still doing those dreams.

Speaker 2:

It's funny that I mentioned Sicily, because that would have been for us oh my gosh, like 12 years ago, going to Sicily here in another month, and that was one of the things we want to do. But what we also wanted to do is we said, you know, we have neglected being in like I have a small group. She has a Bible study that she's taught for 15 years and so that's kind of her group of women. But we neglected doing things together as couples in our church. And so we said 12 years ago we need to lean into that because now we have more time to do it.

Speaker 2:

We talked about a board that I was on that I needed to get off because it was a board that was really great when the kids were younger and it was kind of a part of a thing that the kids were being. They could find somebody else and guess what they did, and I went off, and so we had all kinds of good decisions. We had good decisions about working out. We had good decisions about wanting to and I'm not even a gardener. I couldn't tell you the difference between an azalea and a hibiscus. Honestly, I'm amazed that I even said the word azalea, because I still don't know what it looks like. But we got into doing some of that together because of having a conversation about it and we had a guy painting our house yesterday and he said you guys have the coolest garden. And I was like, oh man, I still don't know what an azalea is.

Speaker 1:

But I have a nice garden, but that felt good and you did a dream list. I mean, what a great thing. It sounds easy, but once again, it's that you know, and we do have more time. Let's be honest, we do have more time. I know I have more time with my spouse now.

Speaker 2:

And we need to communicate and to create something like a dream list. I love that you also talk about something called thank therapy. Yeah, that's kind of a life message for me. I found that the Bible says in everything you do, give thanks for this is God's will for you. And I had trouble with that scripture because how can I thank God if my mom died? How do I thank God for one of my kids crashing in college? How do I thank God for Kathy and I not having the intimacy that we had hoped or whatever? And then I realized it doesn't say for, it says in and to me, thank therapy is practicing daily thankfulness, and so I did it this morning. Actually, I actually put your name on it because what I did was I write adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication.

Speaker 2:

I was a youth pastor in another life and I would teach kids. That's what you do every morning in a short way. And so I try to write down about 20 reasons why I am thankful Really, and you know it's nothing fancy. Well, I shouldn't say that, since I said I mentioned you today. Yeah, exactly, but you know it's nothing fancy, but that has really helped me.

Speaker 2:

And so, with Kathy, I remember a time where we were speaking at a thing called Mount Hermon it's a beautiful conference center in Northern California and we were driving down the coast to see our daughter who was going to college in Central California on the coast, and I was so mad at her because we'd been there, it'd been great. And then we went to Carmel, california, beautiful place, wonderful food, great night, romance, you know, walking on the beach, all that stuff. And then Kathy says to me Jim, I think you're getting a double chin. And I went oh my gosh, we've had this great time. Why is she saying that? So I get kind of when I get frustrated, I just get quiet, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And then it was as if I heard God say practice what you've been learning, practice this, thank therapy. So I said with gritted teeth thank you God for Kathy. She's an amazing wife and she's an amazing mother and it was so great to be with her. And then I said and thank you for this and thank you for that, thank you for this beautiful day. And my circumstance hadn't changed, but my attitude had. So I leaned over and gave her a kiss. I don't suggest that people do that when you're driving on Highway 1, on a curvy road, but I did Gave her a kiss on the cheek and I said hey, you know, I'm really thankful for you and she goes. Oh, I thought you were mad because I said you had a double chin, I love it I said, we'll talk about that later.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

But the point being, yeah, we needed to talk about the double chin thing Of course. Now you're looking, you can see me, so you're kind of does he have a double chin? I?

Speaker 1:

don't see one.

Speaker 2:

But the point I'm trying to say is I find that when I'm grateful toward my wife, practicing thank therapy toward my wife it's funny that we mentioned this, because today, you know around a kind of a special day. Here I'm writing 50 reasons why I'm thankful to Kathy. Right now I'm at 27, because I started this morning and now I'm on the podcast.

Speaker 2:

That's pretty good, amazing, yeah. So I'm going to give her these 50 things. You know, I did it about 10 years ago and the reason I'm doing it again, in fact I should go look in her drawer, because it was in her drawer the last time I saw it. If I have any trouble with the 50, I don't think I will, but the point being that was really special to her, and so we're going out to dinner tonight and I'm going to hand her my little list of 50. That's fabulous. So thoughtful.

Speaker 1:

And yeah, I mean, those are things we just take for granted. We do we take for granted?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's cheaper than long-stem roses. What, yeah, it's cheaper than long-stem roses.

Speaker 2:

What can I say? There you go. But you know what it's more meaningful it is when somebody says I'm thankful to you for and so that's you know. I just think that's what we do in our place and that takes energy, it takes insight. Especially, you can be mad 24-7, 365, because a sinner married another sinner and you had sin of thelings or whatever. But the point being, we have to be intentional about it and I just find I feel better when I am aware of the reasons why I'm thankful. So I appreciate you asking that question about thank therapy, because that's a big deal to me it's a big yeah.

Speaker 1:

No, I think it's very. It's just, it's incredible. Thank you for explaining it. Resolving conflict comes up a lot and I had a couple people reach out. One woman in Colorado her name was Grace actually and she reached out and she knew you were going to be on the show and she said I always feel like whenever we're in conflict or in an argument, one of us has to win, right, and I think a lot of people will relate to that. That's the one question. I got several sent in to me and I thought, boy, that's a big one, because I do think there is something about that. Yeah, I got to win this. It's an argument, right, right, what would you say about?

Speaker 2:

that. Oh no, I would say for me. I have to think this in my head. This is embedded in my head now because Kathy and I speak on it and so I had to learn this and so talk about a learned trait.

Speaker 2:

But I always say do I want to win the argument or do I want to improve the relationship so I can, I can win an argument with Kathy, kathy, kathy goes. You know, I don't like how you could, you're, I'm, I'm probably a little bit more articulate than her. I'm a speaker, so you know I can kind of just buzz right over. But if I do that, then I just lost the argument, I lost the war. You know I can win the argument and that'll actually shut her down. So that's the question I have to ask Do I want to do? I want to do, I have to.

Speaker 2:

Now, what we do is we go from we all have tension in a relationship, do we move to defensiveness, where we have to say no, I'm being defensive, or do we say we, we is a lot tougher, we means, what's my issue in this? What's the story behind the story? How can we improve this relationship? And that's what I kind of call the positive dance. We go to we, when we go to defensiveness. Oh no, no, no. That just stops the argument cold. It doesn't improve it, but yet we tend to go that way and maybe we learn that from our parents, maybe we learn that from just doing it all the time. So I think again, you learn conflict resolution, getting the—I mean you talk with the counselor. Sometimes the Bible says where there's no counsel, the people fall. In the multitude of counselors, there is safety. Find counselors who can help you work through conflict. Read a book on conflict. There's good stuff out there on how to do that.

Speaker 1:

So important yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

The last thing I want to talk about and I know it's a big one and a lot of women talk about this, and from a woman perspective, a woman over 50 that reach out to me, intimacy in their relationship, sex in their relationship, is empty nesters. It's challenging because women feel as though their bodies change. Well, men's have changed too, but for some reason women carry that weight of wow, I'm just not as appealing as I used to be, and so how can we? Obviously through communication and other things we spoke about, but do you have any tips there for us? You know?

Speaker 2:

what I agree with you. I think women have a harder time. At least my experience is that way. I don't think it's. You know, it's always easy for men. You have changing libidos, you have changing bodies. Women are more concerned about their body image than a man is concerned about his body image. But I think you have to figure out how to rekindle the romance in your relationship and to do that that is going to take some energy, but I'm saying it can be done.

Speaker 2:

You know you light the spark again. So the way you light the spark is by putting energy into a romantic date. By putting energy into a romantic date by literally, you're probably not going to have physical intimacy as often, but you're going to have. You can have better physical intimacy. And so this is where you have to talk about it. And if people got in the habit of never talking about physical intimacy and so many people say, you know, we haven't talked about it in 40 years, we do it but we haven't talked about it Well, even talking about physical intimacy, especially in the empty nest, is intimate. Yeah, you know, intimate just means connecting, connecting. So when you connect, connecting.

Speaker 2:

Now, what I'm saying to some people in the empty nest and I'm kind of laughing about this. I do a thing. I'm doing it in three weeks at a place called Wind Shape and it's finding emptiness. Success in your marriage, it's Chick-fil-A's big deal. And I do it twice a year and I say schedule sex.

Speaker 2:

In the emptiness, schedule it, you got more time. So if it's Wednesday, wednesday, if it's Friday, friday schedule. And I had a guy come up to me and he goes I'm really frustrated with you, say scheduling, because does that mean I can't do it any other time? I go no, no, no, I'm just saying if it's not working, then why not? You know, why not a time? And I just laughed that this guy was like very upset with me that I was saying because I said schedule. I gave a story about a guy who schedules sex on Wednesday with his wife. He, not he, they schedule sex and but you know that's not a bad thing and a lot of marriage therapists who deal with the empty nest are talking about one of the ways to rekindle that relationship is literally just start looking forward to it and if it is working, great, keep doing it. But if it's not working, then maybe there is a schedule. I'm not saying that. You know if somebody has a sick or somebody has something else going on.

Speaker 2:

So I honestly think that that little secret you know to that is great, but part of it is in the empty nest. We get lazy communicating and you know, the truth is is emotional intimacy precedes physical intimacy. So if we're not being emotionally intimate and guys don't get that women are better at this, they're still not that good at it yet, and so we have to understand that emotional intimacy does proceed. And then also, I say to people all the time initiate. So men, I'll say this to the women If you say to your spouse, you know it's possible tonight we could have a moment.

Speaker 2:

What's he going to be thinking about all day? He's going to be doing that. That's not in a woman's mind as much, but it is in a man's mind. So you know you initiate by saying, hey, you know, that's not, you're married, for goodness sakes, that's not anything bad about that. And for a he needs to touch, touch the dishes, touch the laundry, touch the you know whatever to help. Because a woman's emotional connection is geared to a lot of her workload and so if some of that gets done and gets some help and you know, usually both women and men are working, there's all these things, but women take more time in the home and all that. So you know, for goodness sakes, don't go straight to the television, turn on the TV or get to your computer, but literally help out. That's going to bring more energy into it. People who put energy into their physical intimacy have better physical intimacy. Of course that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

It makes sense. It makes sense. And so many things here, so many great takeaways, as always, jim, you're just such a wealth of knowledge. Where are you going to be in Wisconsin?

Speaker 2:

Rice Lake Wisconsin.

Speaker 1:

Really Okay. I'm a Wisconsin girl, born and raised Okay.

Speaker 2:

So I was laughing because I'm looking at, I'm flying in on Friday it's snowing, from Minneapolis to Rice Lake, which is two hours, and I'm a California boy who lives at the beach just down the street here, and I'm laughing that in this rent-a-car. Putting me in that car may not be the smartest thing. So I had to say to myself I love Wisconsin, it's great, and I've been to Rice Lake just not that long ago, speaking at the same place. But I'm kind of like hmm, I chose Rice Lake in the middle of February.

Speaker 1:

In February. Yeah, so as we leave today, I'll connect everything, all of your books. Your books are phenomenal. I'm actually doing a group here in Sarasota talking about Empty Nest, so we had our session on Monday and we talked about this and I know they're going to be listening to this episode. But people can find your books. They can find. You offer so much on Homeward. Can you just walk through that before we leave today?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, homeward is a great organization. We have four values strong marriages, confident parents, empowered kids and healthy leaders, and so all of our content, all of our stuff is on that. We have two great podcasts. One is for that, I do called Homeward what is it called Homeward? With Jim Burns, and then the other one is called Embracing your Season. It's by an incredible woman named Paige Klingenpiel who's a therapist, and it's on parenting the littles, empowering teenagers, and I love that. I love what she's doing and I love that Homeward is doing that. So a lot of new stuff coming out of Homeward.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love following it. I love following it. I love following it. Jim, what's one thing you want to do in the next 10 years? Is there something you want to do?

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, I love what I do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you can tell.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes people will say, oh, what I want to do is when I grow up. I want to do this. I'm kind of living my dream.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

As a guy who's put my life into this, I love what I'm doing. I also you know we're talking about marriage. I want Kathy and I to finish really well, and so I want us to have more times together, more special things, and so we're trying to create more moments together as a couple, and I am now called the founder of Homeward because we have a new president, so this is awesome. I'm not having to do all the day-to-day stuff.

Speaker 2:

You get a little more time and it gives Kathy and me some more time and I love that. And yet by no means am I retiring. In fact, she would say, you're probably working harder, but I'm also doing it at kind of the. I want to write, I want to speak. I think there's some great content still in me to get out.

Speaker 1:

I think so too. That's awesome. Thanks for the time, jim. I appreciate it. Always Great to be with you, amy, thanks so much for listening today. We know how valuable your time is and that's why we keep it short and sweet. Don't forget to follow us on all the socials, and you can check out all the links and resources in the show notes. Until next time, go forth and be awesome.