What If The Spark Doesn’t Come Back?

Welcome to Ask A MWLTF (Yes, that’s Mother Who Likes to F*ck.), a monthly anonymous advice column from Scary Mommy. Here we’ll dissect all your burning questions about motherhood, sex, romance, intimacy, and friendship with the help of our columnist, Penelope, a writer and mental health practitioner in training. She’ll dish out her most sound advice for parents on the delicate dance of raising kids without sacrificing other important relationships. Email her at askpenelope@scarymommy.com.

The Question: My youngest is in high school, and I’ve started to think ahead to what it will be like in a few years when our house is empty. I know it will be here before I’m ready. People keep saying this is when couples “find each other again,” and joking about finally having sex in every room of the house. But honestly, I feel more anxious than excited. My partner and I haven’t had much of a sex life in years. We’ve been busy, tired, focused on the kids. What if nothing comes back? Is there anything we should be doing now, before we get there?

The Answer:

There’s a very specific fantasy attached to the empty nest, and it’s surprisingly sexual. It’s not just that the kids leave—it’s that something else returns. Privacy, yes, but also desire. The assumption is that once the interruptions are gone, the two of you will look at each other and remember exactly how this worked. That sex has been waiting patiently behind the closed door of your parenting years, ready to resume the moment the house gets quiet.

It’s a comforting idea. It’s also a little misleading.

The reality is that for most couples, the empty nest doesn’t uncover a fully intact sex life. It reveals the relationship that’s actually been there all along—just without the constant motion and noise of parenting to organize it. And that can feel less like a sudden rekindling and more like a pause— a moment where you realize how much of your connection has been structured around being needed, being busy, being focused on something outside the two of you.

If your kids are in high school, you’re already in that in-between space. They still need you, but not in the same constant, consuming way. There’s more room in the day, more quiet in the evenings, more moments where you and your partner are left facing each other without a clear task. You’ve spent years being efficient together—coordinating schedules, solving problems, keeping things running. That kind of partnership works. It’s also not especially erotic.

So the question isn’t really Will our sex life come back later? It’s What are we doing with the space that’s already starting to open up now?

Intimacy doesn’t restart all at once when your youngest leaves for college. It either stays faintly alive in the background over time, or it gets quiet enough that it feels unfamiliar when you try to return to it. And the difference between those two experiences is usually made up of small, almost forgettable moments in these middle years.

I’m not talking about big gestures. I’m talking about the small moments where you both remember you are something other than co-managers of a household.Do you talk about things that aren’t logistical. Do you notice each other in passing. Is there any kind of physical closeness that isn’t immediately tied to obligation or expectation. These things don’t look like a sex life, exactly, but they’re often what a sex life grows out of.

Another quiet shift that happens around this stage is that couples become very good at not needing much from each other. You develop systems, divide responsibilities, and learn how to move around each other smoothly. It keeps things calm. But it can also flatten the relationship into something that feels efficient and low-friction. Desire, unfortunately, doesn’t thrive on efficiency. It tends to need a little curiosity, a little unpredictability, a sense that the other person is still separate enough to be interesting.

None of this means you need to suddenly reinvent your relationship while your teenager is upstairs doing homework. It just means paying attention to whether there’s still something alive between you that isn’t purely functional. Because what the empty nest does, more than anything, is remove the buffer. It doesn’t create intimacy. It exposes the conditions for it.

So I wouldn’t hold too tightly to the image of a sexual comeback waiting for you a few years down the road. That kind of pressure can make the present feel like a holding pattern instead of a place where anything meaningful is happening.You’re already in the transition.

The question is less about what will happen when the house is empty, and more about what’s possible right now.

You don’t need to overhaul anything or plan a future sexual comeback. But you might start small, in ways that don’t announce themselves as “working on your relationship.” Sit together at the end of the night without a screen. Take a walk without talking about the kids. Let a moment of physical closeness linger instead of moving past it—not because it has to lead somewhere, but because it keeps a certain kind of attention alive.

The empty nest won’t create that attention for you. It will just show you whether it’s been there all along.