Prison relationships are built on hope—hope that love can conquer all, that sacrifices will lead to something better, and that the man you love will keep his promises. For years, I clung to that hope. I believed in the future my partner and I dreamed of together, even as reality slowly tore that dream apart.
Like many women in my position, I poured everything I had into being the “perfect” partner. I wrote heartfelt letters, accepted every phone call, and made sure there was always money in his commissary. And when he sent me handmade gifts—crocheted blankets, painted portraits of us—I convinced myself these tokens were proof that our love could survive any obstacle.
But those gestures weren’t enough to outweigh the emotional toll. Weekends became marathon prison visits, hours spent driving, enduring invasive searches, and centering my life around someone who couldn’t be there for me in the same way.
What reality shows like “Love After Lockup” don’t reveal is the quiet devastation of these relationships—the sacrifices, the betrayals, and the relentless emotional toll they take. My story isn’t just about heartbreak; it’s about the lessons I learned, the bonds I formed, and the strength it took to finally walk away.
The Start of Something New
I was twenty years old when I met him—young, ambitious, and completely unprepared for the world he belonged to. He was smooth, confident, and charismatic, with a presence that drew people in. Dressed in Polo shirts, Girbaud jeans, and Timberlands, he looked like he’d stepped out of a music video. But it wasn’t just his style that captivated me—it was his charm.
“You’re beautiful,” he said the day we met, his Jamaican accent deliberate, his eyes locking on mine. I believed him.
He told me he was in town for a fresh start, staying with his sister while she pursued her pre-med degree. He painted himself as a man with ambition—a man who’d been through hard times but was determined to build something better. For weeks, he courted me with dinners, gifts, and promises of the future we’d build together.
But he had secrets. The first crack in his story appeared when he returned from a trip to Miami with what he called a “package”—a kilogram of cocaine hidden in the soles of tennis shoes. I still remember how casually he cut the soles open, laughing as he revealed what looked like compacted sugar. “This isn’t sugar,” he joked, before warning me not to touch it.
I should have walked away then, but I didn’t. He moved in, paid my bills, and helped me enroll in college. I convinced myself we were building a life together. I didn’t realize then just how much that belief would cost me.
The Knock That Changed Everything
Three months later, my world fell apart. It was close to midnight when a frantic knock at my door jolted me awake. One of his crew members stood there, drenched in sweat. His words tumbled out in a rush: “They raided the spot. He’s been arrested.”
I froze. “Arrested? For what?” I asked, though deep down, I already knew. The signs had been there all along—the late-night phone calls, the trap house visits, the trips to Miami. Still, hearing it out loud felt like the ground had split open beneath me.
The next day, he called me from jail. His voice was calm, almost too calm. “This is nothing,” he said. “They don’t have anything solid. I’ll get a good lawyer and be out in no time.” Then, almost casually, he added, “Check the vents in the apartment. There’s enough money in there to cover everything—lawyer fees, commissary, whatever you need.”
The Prisoner’s Wife
When I first read The Prisoner’s Wife by Asha Bandele, I felt like I was looking into my own future. Bandele, a highly intelligent and accomplished woman, had fallen in love with a man who was in prison for murder. Against all odds, she married him and fought tirelessly for their relationship, believing in their love and his eventual freedom.
Her story captivated me. If this brilliant, successful woman could navigate a prison marriage, then I thought I could, too. Her unwavering devotion made me believe that love could survive even the bleakest circumstances.
Prison Visiting Rooms: My New Normal
After his arrest, visiting him became my new normal. I drove for hours to remote prisons, sitting in crowded waiting areas before being led into sterile visitation rooms. We sat on opposite sides of thick glass, speaking through phones for just 30 minutes at a time.
During one visit, he proposed. “I don’t want to just ask you to wait,” he said. “I want to make you my wife.” He told me to use the money he stashed in my house to buy myself an engagement ring.
I said yes. I believed in him, in us, and in the future we could build together. Three years didn’t seem long. It felt like a small sacrifice for the life we’d have once he was free.
We were married in prison shortly after. The ceremony was brief, held in a cramped visiting room under the watchful eyes of guards. My sister stood by my side as my maid of honor and witness, adding a strange mix of normalcy and absurdity to the moment. We exchanged vows, shared a quick kiss, and then had what we jokingly referred to as our “15-minute honeymoon.” While my sister waited in the car, he and I whispered about our dreams for the future, clinging to hope in a place built to crush it.
Afterward, my sister and I drove back to the hotel, the honeymoon entourage I never thought I’d have. Instead of champagne toasts and romantic candlelight, I celebrated my marriage with her in a room cluttered with takeout containers from the diner next door. My new husband and I spent the rest of our honeymoon over the phone, where I balanced the glow of hope with the weight of reality.
When his call ended abruptly at count time and lights out, I glanced over at my sister soaking in the hotel jacuzzi, raising her glass of champagne. “Some honeymoon, huh?” she joked, as if we weren’t already living it. What a way to start a marriage, right? Two bridesmaids, one groom behind bars, and a sister toasting what was supposed to be a fairy tale.
The Road to Prison
Those three years were grueling. Visiting became a routine that consumed my life. I drove hundreds of miles, sometimes through violent storms where rain and hail pelted my windshield, blurring my vision. I stayed in cheap motels and faced the humiliation of dress codes, invasive searches, and long waits in prison lobbies.
I spent thousands of dollars on collect calls, commissary deposits, and care packages. After my phone was shut off, I ran up my mama’s and Auntie’s phone bills just to stay connected to him. His needs were always the priority. I poured everything I had into keeping him comfortable, even as my own life felt like it was slipping away.
Through him, I connected with other women whose lives mirrored my own—girlfriends and wives of his inmate friends who needed rides to the prison. At first, I hesitated. I didn’t want to spend my weekends chauffeuring strangers. But over time, those shared journeys became a lifeline.
We split gas and hotel costs, shared meals, and sat together in prison lobbies for hours, waiting for our turn to see the men we loved. During those long drives and even longer waits, we swapped stories: how we met our men, the promises they made, and the sacrifices we carried to hold it all together.
For a while, it felt like we were a sisterhood. We understood each other in ways no one else could. But as time passed, I began to see the patterns we were all stuck in. Our lives mirrored episodes of “Love After Lockup“: the head-over-heels devotion while our men were behind bars, followed by the inevitable crash of broken promises and heartbreak when they came home.
When Love Isn’t Enough
What made it harder was that he wasn’t loyal, even in prison. Looking back, I should have known I wasn’t immune to the cheating. I met and even drove with other women who didn’t realize they had the same boyfriend. They would be scheduled for visits on opposite days, carefully orchestrated to keep their paths from crossing. But I convinced myself I was different. I thought I what we had was special.
I’ll never forget the day I was turned away from a visit. I’d driven three hours alone, only to be told he was already in the visitation room—with another woman. The guard apologized but said there was nothing they could do. He couldn’t have two visits at the same time.
Later, I discovered it wasn’t just visits. He had been writing letters to other women, charming them with the same words and promises he once used on me. When I confronted him, he brushed it off. “You’re the one I love,” he said.
I stayed. Somehow, he always managed to pull me back in.
The Truth About Love Behind Bars
When he was finally released, I hoped we could start fresh. During his sentence, he had enrolled us in a prison family ministry—a program designed to help inmates rebuild relationships with their families and prepare for life after release. They even helped him secure a great-paying job, and for a time, it seemed like things were improving.
But the streets still had a hold on him. He slipped back into old habits, and the cycle of incarceration began again.
For every three years he spent in prison, he was only out for a few fleeting months. Each time, I convinced myself it would be different—that this would be the moment he turned his life around. When he finally managed to stay out for a year and a half, we were no longer together, but a part of me still believed it was his chance to make good on all those promises.
But it wasn’t. He returned to the same life that had already taken so much from us. This time, it caught up with him for good. He was sentenced to 20 years. And he’s still there now.
Sadly, none of the women I bonded with saw their relationships survive past the prison gates. One woman spent years pouring her heart, time, and money into her boyfriend, only for him to leave her for someone else just weeks after his release. Another gave up everything—her job, her family, her home—to follow her husband to another country after he was deported.
Then there was me, holding onto the same hope, making the same sacrifices, and telling myself that my story would be different. But it wasn’t.
Prison love exists in a world of illusion—where separation amplifies longing, promises feel unbreakable, and the future seems full of possibilities. But the truth is far more complicated. The control and structure of prison create a bubble that often masks deeper issues. Once the men are released, that bubble bursts. Freedom brings choices, challenges, and temptations, exposing cracks in relationships that once felt solid behind bars.
Even Asha Bandele, whose book The Prisoner’s Wife inspired me to believe in the possibility of lasting love, saw her relationship fall apart after her husband’s release. Like so many women, I told myself that our love could withstand the lies, the betrayals, and the endless cycles of incarceration. But I learned the hard way that prison love often crumbles under the weight of reality.
Love Beyond Lockup
Walking away from him wasn’t just about leaving the relationship—it was about reclaiming myself. It meant confronting the painful reality that all my sacrifices—the sleepless nights, the endless trips, the thousands of dollars spent —had brought me nothing but heartbreak. For years, I poured everything I had into a love that demanded my loyalty while giving me nothing in return. Leaving meant finally choosing me.
Behind bars, promises feel bigger, dreams seem brighter, and love feels like it can overcome anything. But that illusion rarely survives reality. Once the men are released, the structure and control of prison are replaced by freedom, and that freedom often reveals cracks in the relationship that were always there, just hidden behind the glass.
I thought I could love him into becoming the man he promised to be. But prison doesn’t just confine the person on the inside—it traps the person on the outside, too. The truth about love behind bars is that it often asks those who love the inmate to carry the emotional, financial, and mental weight of the relationship, while expecting them to sacrifice their dreams, their dignity, and their sense of self.
Loving him cost me more than time and money. It cost me my belief in my own worth. I let his promises blind me to my own needs. I believed that loyalty meant waiting, enduring, and forgiving. But love shouldn’t feel like a life sentence. True love doesn’t ask you to sacrifice pieces of yourself for someone else’s survival.
To the women and men who are still navigating this journey, I want you to know this: You don’t have to lose yourself to prove your love. Love shouldn’t confine you. It shouldn’t trap you in cycles of sacrifice and pain. You deserve a love that gives as much as it takes—a love that uplifts you, not one that breaks you down.
Looking back now, I see that walking away wasn’t the end of my story—it was the beginning. Rebuilding my life meant mourning not just the relationship, but also the version of myself that thought love required suffering. It meant learning to see myself as worthy of joy, stability, and freedom.
My story didn’t end the way I imagined it would, but it gave me clarity about what love should—and shouldn’t—be. Love doesn’t confine you. It doesn’t demand that you give up your identity or your dreams. True love doesn’t trap you. It sets you free.
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