Virginia DeLuca is a therapist, author and short story writer. She contributed to New York Times’ feature article page called Modern Love. It was published by NYT’s Weekend Edition of July 19-20, 2025. She has published her memoir titled “If You Must Go, I wish You Triplets”.
In Modern Love, Ms DeLuca’s story was named “He took my story, so I made a new one”. Her story was how her second husband, who spent 10 years of married life with her, suddenly divorced her and left her.
He was already 60 years old and she couldn’t fathom why he wanted to do such a thing. She was clueless and didn’t see it coming. She was shocked and disillusioned with her former marriage. She thought he was suffering from frontal lobe dementia, which may have explained his behavioral change.
One of my male friends, S., told me his dad, at 60 years old, walked out of their family home and never returned. He didn’t take a single piece of luggage. He left his wife and four adult children. Much, much later, my friend discovered his dad had relocated to the other side of town, to live with his second wife. My friend was pained and anguished. He said, “I can not understand why, my dad at 60 years of age, would disappear, only for us to discover that he left home to marry a younger woman.”
The similarities between Ms DeLuca’s ex-husband and my friend’s father, was their age and them leaving their marriages.
I couldn’t understand it either.
A few years later, my male relative upped home and left the country for an overseas job. He turned his back on his wife with their 7 year old child. Around 5 years later, he reunited with his wife when he was suffering from an illness and couldn’t earn his keep. He went for extensive medical checkups and his doctors found he had early dementia at 49 years old. He probably had it when he first abandoned his wife and child. His behavioral change could have been the result of his early dementia.
I recalled my friend’s story about his 60 year old dad who left his family. There are similarities between his story and my relative’s story. The difference was that my friend never knew if his dad had dementia.