IS "lonesomeness" the right word? Sometimes I’ll feel a physical pang of loss, just under my heart, so intense I draw in my breath. Maybe it’s just a little moment I want to share that will start that stab of sadness, or some TV show we watched together, some thought about the dinner I’m making which I know they’ll love, some silly joke flitting through my mind that makes us laugh together.

Then, in the synapse-flash it takes for a solitary thought to travel from mind to heart, I’ll realise they aren’t there. And it feels so bloody painful. Mixed with the pain, though, there’s something else - some analgesic. I know they’re out there, you see, in the wild world being wonderful people. That makes the pain drain away, for a while. Because - and isn’t this every parent’s truth - if your children are safe and happy, then you’re happy, even, strangely, if you’re also sad that they’re no longer in your life every single day.

Our two daughters have now fled the nest, split, departed, vamoosed. Like most kids of their generation, they boomeranged around a bit. Both daughters lived at home while at university. So, separation from them was incremental. Maybe that’s why, now the separation is finalised, it hurts so much. First, my oldest daughter lived in France as a student. But she came back and stayed with us again during her Masters. Our youngest - a year divides them - stayed longer. Her boyfriend even lived with us during Covid. My wife and I had a bulging, chattering, lovely warm nest.

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Now, they’re both finally gone: settled into careers, with steady partners, making their own homes. My sense of joy and pride at the lives they’ve fashioned in this harsh world is boundless. They’re roaring through their professions, acing life, saving hard to buy a home rather than rent, and they’re happy with the men they’ve chosen. My wife and I raised two champion young women.

But I cannot tell you how much we miss them. Empty Nest Syndrome. It’s not something men talk enough about. It’s maybe the last great hurdle guys of my generation need to cross as dads, to complete the divide which lies between us and our own fathers.

Most men of my generation embraced fatherhood in a way our own dads never did; it became the very centre of our lives. There’s not one achievement in my life which dares come even close to just being a dad. The person I was before I had children is a mystery to me. Being a dad put me on a slow but determined road to trying to be a better person. I certainly wandered off that road oftentimes over the years, got lost on the moors, but it was the light from my family, my wife and our daughters, which led me back to the steadier path.

I’m not in any way saying that having children is the only route to happiness. That’s nonsense. I’ve many friends who neither married nor had children and remain completely fulfilled. What I’m saying is that for me, having children began a metamorphosis away from abject selfishness, away actually from a sense of being lost in life, of not knowing what mattered, of feeling rootless, homeless, of being plagued by a permanently wandering soul.

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My children and my wife gave me that most simple of things: foundations upon which to build a stable life. Or as stable as someone rather highly strung can ever have (my children also fostered in me a much-improved sense of perspective, so I came to know my faults, regardless of the discomfort).

Like many GenX kids, my parents didn’t figure much in my childhood. We weren’t called the "latchkey generation" for nothing. Yes, we’d freedom, but for many of us, parents were often absent. I left home at 18, and never went back.

Perhaps, I funnelled that into my own sense of fatherhood. I wanted to be part of my daughters’ lives in every way, not simply some abstract symbol of authority or someone who put dinner on the table. For many men of my generation, the deepness of the relationships we built with our children blossomed into real, genuine friendship as they reached adulthood.

So, my wife and I are very lucky that our daughters are our friends. We spend a lot of time together, laughing, having adventures, sharing stories, and our bond remains deeper than the Mariana Trench.

But I still miss them like hell. Friday night dinners, weekday catch-ups, Saturday afternoons in the pub - that’s great. That’s what you do with friends. But these two are friends I’d die for, happily walk into flames for. My blood.

Yet to ask for more would be a moral failing. I want to see them riding the crest of a wave through this world, I’m happy to stand on the sidelines cheering them. That’s the agony of parenthood really: your dream is to see your children fly higher than you ever flew, but when they fly they have to leave and that breaks your pitiful heart.

I was looking for a picture to go with this column. I didn’t want anything overly posed, at graduations or weddings. The picture needed to be real, as that’s what my relationship is with my daughters: real. So I chose an image of us on holiday in Denmark. The sight of them choked me the hell up. I’ve got damn tears in my eyes just writing this. And, my god, I’ll see them both tonight for dinner.

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All I’m saying here is that we guys - men of my generation - we made such leaps forward compared to our dads. We put fatherhood, not work, at the centre of our lives. What an achievement in just a handful of years, what a change in the notion of masculinity.

So, inevitably, it’s going to hurt now that we’ve reached the age when our children leave and forge their own beautiful lives. We just need to talk about that a wee bit more. We changed when we were young, became more honest about our feelings, so let’s do it now we’re getting grey.