Hello Blue Sisters,

I call you that because wives of police officers have a unique set of stressors, different than wives of doctors or food industry workers, etc.

In that stress, we are so similar. I can't believe it's taken me this long to look for an online support group, and in all your posts I read so many similarities it's frightening. I am starting to come to the very strong conclusion that my problems are because I'm married to an LEO, not my husband or myself in general. 

Here are some resources I've found so far to help you get through, and below is my story. 

--- https://www.policeone.com/health-fitness/articles/377044006-4-tips-on-making-your-police-marriage-work/

Policeone.com in general is a great news collection of the latest police stories around the USA, sometimes they have international stories. It includes chases, videos, discussion about marriage, police officers murdered,  etc. I read this to know what's the latest and greatest in the blue world and make conversation with my husband when it seems his brain isn't in the right gear to process Baby/Toddler World.

--- "A Marriage in Progress" by Victoria M. Newman: a book that helps spouses of LEO's 

--- https://mustbethistalltoride.com : a great blog about a man who begs other men not to divorce their wives and what they can do to avoid it. This REALLY motivated me to become a dedicated wife despite my husband's total ignoring of me some days; because being a mom comes easy to me, but loving a man with so many flaws can be exhausting, so I decided to make a decision that if I die tomorrow, I want to be remembered as an indisputably good wife just to show him he had it good with me ;).

---- If your husband's Precinct allows it, ask to go for a ride-along either with him or a separate female officer. They will even let minors or parents of a police officer do ride-alongs. I have yet to do a ride-along but I have visited my husband often at his job and one time I drove by the area that he used to watch and what I saw was SCARY. Forget people shooting up heroin in broad day light or people so drunk they can't even get up (NOT the bar scene either!!) There was prostitution, mentally ill people and seriously dangerous people all in 3 mile radius and I barely tolerated 5 minutes of being there. It gave me a perspective that my husband is working with not-normal people who do not respond to normal conversation and that this must definitely wear on him; so I generated not only respect for him to be able to help these people, but also more compassion for him to constantly be exposed to humanity at its lowest. When he comes home to his wife and children, I hope ive done a good enough job to made it look like a happy and peaceful home.

My story:

I didn't marry him as a police officer,  although I guess I should have seen it coming. His dad was and still is in LE and my spouse always said he'd never become a police officer because he witnessed the pain and stress it exposed him, his mom,  and his siblings to and that he didn't want that for us. Fast forward through a career crisis and he essentially begged Me (as well as sneakily applied) for my approval of him abandoning nearly $100,000 to become a police officer at $38k. At first I approved because seeing my husband so distraught with his life's purpose and his career was devastating for me to witness. But then as I started to think about it more, and that he would have to leave me with an infant and a toddler by myself for 8 weeks and that when he would return he would have to work in a different city from where we just bought our new house, I panicked and I begged him not to accept the position. He still went through with it. I resented his decision for years and I thought he was selfish because our goal was for me to become a stay-at-home mom, and this had become impossible with this lower-income. (The money situation vastly improved but we definitely shop at Aldi and save as much as we can when we can because it seems like we always have a rainy day.)

Concerned about his safety being away from us in a different city, I decided to sell the house we had just bought and leave all of my family and friends behind for this new and much crappier city for a rental which I absolutely hated. I suffered through two miscarriages and the first miscarriage he came home and the second miscarriage he did not bother coming home because he said there was no one to replace him for the shift. I got pregnant again with our fifth child and on the night that my contractions got so bad that I knew I was going to have to go to the hospital, he did not come home again. Since I did not want to call an ambulance and leave the children alone at the house or bring them with me in an ambulance, I decided to deal with the contractions alone as best as I could and by the time he finished his shift and arrived home, somehow the contractions had gotten much weaker but as a result I was in labor for 2 days after with very weak but painful contractions, and I had to be induced the next day.

Mind you we do not have any social media presence anymore because my husband had received multiple threats from criminals, so my social life had gone to zero and the only neighbors that knew us were handicapped.

On the day our 5th baby was born, my dad was running late driving all the way to us, so to my husband's credit (but it still stinks) my husband missed the birth of our kid as I laboured by myself with a nurse. When the doctor arrived he said the baby had dropped too much and we just couldn't wait for my husband to show up anymore. He literally showed up 2-3 minutes after the baby was born. I was so depressed after our 5th baby was born. I was really in love with our baby but I was so angry at my husband because I felt like I was being completely ignored and almost avoided. I broke down crying because we were also moving to a new state and my dad had been kicked out of his own house because him and my mom had a domestic violence dispute, so my dad was living with us for about 3 weeks which was a complete invasion of privacy for us but we couldn't say no to my dad because it would have been wrong. 

I told my husband that I felt like I couldn't trust him for the moments that I needed him. And that I resented him because when somebody else is in a moment of need or is in trouble, because he's a police officer, he'll come help and save them but for his own wife he can't even spare one minute to be there with me when I need him most. I felt betrayed, lonely and worthless. Over the years he's developed such a pattern of taking sides of strangers over my own that I had a complete emotional trigger when the Vegas shooting happened and one of the concertgoers, a police officer, left his wife to go help other people but he never finished escorting his own wife to safety, and his wife was one of the ones murdered by the gunman. I felt like I was that wife that was abandoned in danger. I know it's a completely screwed up thing to say and feel but that's what I felt, and I cried for her because I felt like he had abandoned her and I felt that I had been abandoned too by my own so that others would be saved.

So many times I've fantasized about leaving my husband. I'm not interested in another man, frankly marriage is difficult and I'm not interested in engaging in a romantic relationship period. The other issue I have is that I really do love my husband. I'm attracted to him and I also like him for who he is, I feel like he's a genuinely likeable person, but he has hurt me so bad in ways that  make him just another person who has betrayed my trust in my life. I just feel that if he was out of my life, things would be a lot more easy for me. But then I think about my kids needing a dad around often.

I grew up in a household where my mom cheated on my dad all the time and my dad had relationships outside of the marriage but he was more discreet. Both of my grandfathers were married more than once and had children with more than one woman, so Fidelity does not run in my family. With my husband being so  different from the man I married and distant, I have agonized for about two years and unfortunately monitored my husband's activities online to see if he is cheating on me either emotionally or physically with another woman. I have confronted him about this topic twice and on the second time that I confronted him  he nearly burst into tears saying that he has never been unfaithful to me and that jokingly but truthfully one woman is enough trouble for him. I believe him.

Since my husband has become a police officer his behavior suggests to my knowledge and speculations that he is cheating on me, but there is no proof after constantly monitoring him, and I also believe him: my heart tells me he's innocent and that he is telling the truth: that he's not being unfaithful to me. I also don't know when he would have the time to have an affair unless it was during work, which screws with my head every once in awhile when he puts too much cologne on.

But ladies... this is how bad it can be, right? That their jobs absorb them so much sometimes it takes the man you loved and it totally transforms him into someone you don't recognize and you may not like. I made a vow on my wedding that I would love him in good times and bad,  and every once in awhile when my husband has had many days off from his job he turns into the old guy I know.

My best advice to you is to hang on.... When I talked to a psychologist and relayed this information that you have read she said that we need to start the proceedings for a divorce. She felt like we did not have a chance in hell after she learned so much about me and my husband. She also suggested I seek out a psychologist who specializes in law enforcement couples because they have a unique set of problems that other couples don't. there's also books on the topic on Amazon. Just Google law enforcement marriage. 

A great website to peruse is: mustbethistalltoride.com . This is a Blog about a man who totally regrets going through with his divorce and he literally wrote volumes on the topic and how he wish he had done things differently with his ex-wife, because they did not get divorced over something like Fidelity, or abuse, or gambling (you know, SERIOUS no-brainer issues), it was simply that they had lost interest in each other and this has become his biggest regret and pain. I read this blog and it made me cry because there are men who just don't know what they're doing to their wives every day. They're blind to the pain they make their wives go through and they don't mean to do it. In this sense women are more intuitive than men socially and women have to analyze the situation for the sake of the marriage if the man is not privy to it.

I want to be present for my husband and as time has gone on in his position as an LEO he is starting to get better and better with me again. It has taken some time for him to re-create his personality with the knowledge and the crap that he has to deal with everyday because he deals with some very evil people, so I'm proud of his growth and I would like to stay by his side. Because truly, I know that if him and I split up, its going to hurt him and it's going to hurt me and it's going to hurt the children.

With love and hope, 

deemommy6