Click here to take a fun quiz about the original run of Dexter! For four seasons, she was Dexter Morgan 's "significant other. Rita was a loving mother who previously was in an abusive marriage with Paul Bennett. Due to her violent past, Rita initially avoided sex with Dexter. This was one of the reasons he kept seeing her as he considered himself emotionally removed from humanity, and thought that if Rita got too close to him, she would sense his darkness.
Dexter felt that Rita was a perfect girlfriend because she was as damaged as he was in her own way. Rita was completely unaware that Dexter was a serial killer, and it delighted her that he was great with her children. Rita began to develop more confidence in herself, along with a growing sexual attraction to Dexter. Rita, despite not liking violence, had season tickets to the Florida Panthers , and her favorite sport was hockey.
At first, Rita tended to be naively unaware of Dexter's flaws. Later, a complicated situation involving Lila West in which Rita and Dexter broke up and later reconciled changed the fundamental nature of their relationship. While Rita had previously paid his long absences and flimsy cover stories no mind, she began to pick up on Dexter's lies and question his erratic behavior.
After they were married about six months, they entered marriage counseling when she learned he had secretly kept his apartment. For a time, she was moody and easily annoyed, feeling that he had violated her trust. Not a great deal of her early life was known, although it was revealed via a marriage certificate from when she was sixteen years old, that she lived at Elmview Lane in Ashley, MI Her husband at the time was John Alan Ackerman , a year-old mechanic whom she married on 16 August On 6 January , they divorced as Dexter felt, due to a brief teen romance.
After this, Rita moved to Miami. Rita married Paul Bennett after becoming pregnant with Astor. They later had a son, Cody. The marriage would prove to be an unhealthy one, leading to her being abused at the hands of Paul and having to deal with his drug addiction. After a domestic disturbance call, Paul was arrested by Debra Morgan , which prompted Debra to set Rita up on a date with Dexter.
