If You Must Go, I Wish You Triplets

A Memoir

De: Virginia DeLuca

Narrado por: Natalie Stanfield

Sometimes, we know the least about those we love the most.

It took less than an hour for an old life to end and a new one to begin. When Virginia DeLuca’s sixty-year-old husband abruptly walked out on their serene and happy—even joyful—marriage, proclaiming a sudden desire to have babies, everyone had a theory. He already knocked someone up. Nervous breakdown. Brain tumor.

After DeLuca met her husband, she learned that it was possible for her to love with abandon and entwine her life with this caring and compassionate man. But fourteen years later, she was only left with the mystery of the ending.

DeLuca, a psychotherapist, spent decades helping clients cope with sudden losses and dramatic changes—and now it’s happened to her. Now, she must hunt to find the truth of her own story.

In the tradition of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb, If You Must Go, I Wish You Triplets is an unflinching exploration of love and relationships from a woman who ultimately found that life can expand in unanticipated ways.

©2025 Virginia DeLuca (P)2025 Virginia DeLuca

Authentic

I really like the honesty and humility this story depicts. Choosing one’s path is a journey.

This woman deserves a medal...

for being so kind to her bat sh*t crazy husband. She also deserves a medal for the writing--she is the master of understatement in her portrayal of Perry, so we as the readers want to throttle him, but she does not come across angry or bitter (even though she knows she should be). Perry hangs himself with his own words (lots of texts and emails), which made DeLuca's job easier. And showing him sobbing everywhere.

But it was more than a book about her husband leaving her so he can be free to make babies with someone young, it was about family, death, grief, aging, a strong network of friends and family.

I found the structure interesting, because as she's continually circling in her thoughts about her ex, she's circling back on her life and thinking about her relationships with family and her other ex-husband. Luckily for us, she's a therapist so she has the tools and the insight to make sense of a husband who is not quite the catch she thought he was and to make meaning of their 14 years together.