When you are a Law Enforcement spouse, you don’t know what the day is going to bring. People get held over. You don’t hear from them for hours, sometimes all day. Anything can happen at any given moment. Law Enforcement is one of the most challenging careers for many different reasons. When I started dating my husband, I had no clue what I was getting myself into.
Growing up my dad that was in corrections. Which is a different aspect of law enforcement, but the hours were similar and so was the exhaustion. For some reason, in my head those things didn’t click. When my husband became a cop, after the academy. FTO was brutal. I am surprised our relationship survived, because I was so naive and I know he was exhausted. Coming home every morning, sleeping, only to go back and do it again for 10 more hours.
You don’t know, until you know. Of course I did my best, with making sure he was fed and making sure his uniform was clean for the next shift. But those are physical things, mentally I was draining him. With my complaints about him not doing enough or whatever. Because I was unaware of the mental strain that came with Law Enforcement. I only understood when I started working at the same department, doing the same hours.
Even being non-sworn, I would leave every day feeling drained. I even went home crying a few times because I didn’t know if I could make it through training. It wasn’t until then that I figured out Law Enforcement is not for the faint of heart. Sometimes, I don’t see my husband for a few days. I’ll see him only in passing.
When you are a Law Enforcement spouse, you take on a responsibility. Which is making sure your officer is able to come home and unwind for a little bit before they take on the challenge that is the house and the kids. Because when they are driving home, they are trying to disconnect from work and debrief their day. Once they walk through the door, having a few minutes to step away from all of that is needed.
I listen to a mom podcast, and one thing the podcaster says that I can’t ever agree with because it is the exception. She says “when your husband is driving home from work, that is their quiet time.” I have a hard time agreeing with that because after a day of work on the streets, it takes a lot more to come down from the 24 hour adrenaline rush than a 40 minute drive home. That is in traffic nonetheless.
When my husband comes home from work, I do my best not to bombard him with all the things I went through all day. Because I know his day was A LOT more stressful than mine. (Yes I know we have a baby, and that is stressful but Law Enforcement stress is a whole different beast.) He always walks in and says “Hey babe” ,gives me a kiss, and loves on our daughter. But that is also on a normal shift.
When he is on any other shift but a normal one, he comes home and there is a light left on for him. He eats dinner alone while the dogs and I are asleep upstairs. He doesn’t get to see our daughter before she goes to sleep. He taps me on the shoulder to wake me up just enough to give me a kiss good night.
This job can be very lonely at times and as spouses, it is our job to try to give our officers the easiest recovery time from shift to shift. A lot of people don’t understand the strain, until they go through it themselves. Sure every job can be exhausting. But this exhaustion is a different kind. Officers are on their toes 10 to 24 hours (because sometimes, that’s just how it is) a day. That is so draining and hard for some people to understand.
That’s just the surface, after exhaustion comes a boat load of mental health complications. Because officers are built to be tough mentally. If they speak up about something they aren’t feeling right about, they are labeled as weak, or they are scared of repercussions. Causing them to just push everything down and pretend like everything is fine. But that is a post for another time.
The transition from regular work to a career in Law Enforcement is life changing. It changes relationships, it changes how you look at people, and it changes how you look at yourself. I have learned a lot in the last 6 years of him being on the job and I am continuing to learn. Finding people that know and understand the career is so important.
So the next time you see an police officer, think about what they’re going through.
