It's all terribly romantic. It really is just like in all the Lifetime movies, the ones every woman greedily consumes like chocolate, where the dashing detective sweeps in and knocks the criminal (and the heroine) directly off kilter.
But what they don't show you is Ever After.
Sure, you might get a quick cap as the credits roll that show victim/wife making lemonade with a large, pregnant belly before her as the detective/husband romps with the children in the green-green grass within the white picket fenced yard. But you don't see the pregnant wife cuddled awkwardly in their marriage bed trying to find a comfortable position while her handsome husband runs off on a call at 3 A.M. Or her entirely inelegant form waddling in stretched out sweats and swollen feet while he barely feigns interest as he skims the newspaper.
That part, the latter part I just mentioned, that is my life.
Once upon a time, I was the hapless heroine. Scared, but stubborn, when my white knight, one Robert Goren appeared. He charmed me instantly with his haunted, but caring eyes. Pure sex practically rolled off of him as he effectively took my stalker down.
Most importantly, I fell because he was always there.
There were numerous phone calls asking for reiteration of times, places, locations. Calls detailing progress on the case. Rides to and from the precinct to take care of the minutiae details that those movies never show you. Of course, I can't forget the indefinable heat of his unyielding eyes always watching for and over me in the electric, fast paced hunt for my predator.
I was the only one. His only one.
We fell in love in the in-betweens. A quick sandwich of thanks for his hard work and an extra trip to my apartment to double check all my new window latches. The sweet wine shared as we waited, and I baited, the stalker to come out in a dark jazz hall. The pure victory in his eyes when he made a special trip to my office to utter the miraculous words, "We got him!". Somewhere in all of that, plus the lulling waves of heat and comfort, we fell deep. We shared our bodies and our secrets. Swoon after a home, a marriage, and children in short order.
But after all of this, comes Ever After.
Reality hit quickly. We shared a romantic dinner and the bliss of love making after I told him I was carrying our first child. Deep in sleep, naively secure, my world was fractured in the cool night when his partner called him to a scene. I knew going in he was a cop, but from a different angle. I was once "the call". Where he now left my bed, he once ran to my side. To his partner, to his latest case, to somewhere I couldn't reach. Doctors appointments spent alone staring at the monitor as our baby floated and fluttered with no father to see.
That's another thing they don't mention. The partner.
The movies show you an obese, curmudgeon cop. Wise with hardened knowledge from years in the life. Tender from years shared with a nice wife named Rita, or Rosie and their 3 kids. They don't show you the other possibility. The beautiful, strong willed partner whom the detective can't function without. The Yin to the professional Yang. Not to say they were ever romantic, but much more basic.
They were soul mates. Two halves to a whole.
At home he was solely mine, but she owned him in a way I couldn't touch. He would never cheat. I know most assuredly they were not sexual. But there was always an indescribable…intimacy, in the way they knew each other in their respective roles. I was never jealous, I knew cognitively that there was no basis to be.
But like the movies, I trusted her as if she were the man they portray..
I trusted her implicitly. Godmother to my children, keeper of my husbands heart when he had to be away. If they did show the beautiful partner, I'm sure she wouldn't be painted that way. She wouldn't be shown as "Aunty Alex" in shabby jeans making cookies in her tiny apartment when her partner and I needed a break. She would be a sexed up vixen, her bosom out shining her superior detective skills.
Maybe it really isn't like the movies.
All the heat and fervor are smoke screens. The rush to catch a criminal, often mistaken for the rush of a terrible, passionate love to be. The dashing detective who seems to be the shining light of all good, is like any other husband in the end. Out long at night, leaves the seat up, irritable in the mornings. And I am truly a wife. In my former life I was possibly a lot of things, beautiful, passionate, achingly pained victim…who really knows? Now I am the huge, pregnant, stressed out mother chasing her monsters through the store.
Sadly, reality always skews your promising Ever After.