# Staying together

For both of you. Short on purpose.

This is about a partner. Husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, fiancé, whatever you call each other. It is not about parents, children, or siblings. Those relationships go through a sentence too, and they work in ways this page does not describe. I also do not have either family or kids, so I will not pretend to know what that's like.

It is the only page here written for both sides at once. Everything else on this site picks an audience, because your problems are not the same problems. A relationship is the exception: it is the one thing neither of you can work on alone.

It sits on the family side because that is the side with a browser. If the second half of this is for the person inside, print it and send it in.

I did the time. I did not do the waiting. The half of this addressed to the person outside is watched rather than lived, and comes from a lot of people telling me the same things.

If you read nothing else
- Never end a call angry. You may not be able to call back for a day.
- If you must fight, fight in letters or email, not on the phone.
- Have the honest conversation before it starts, not after.

## The honest part — Most of them do not make it

Most relationships do not survive a sentence. You should know that going in.

The ones that do are not the ones with the most love. They are the ones that were honest early, kept a routine, let each other have a real life, and over-communicated.

That is the whole finding. Everything below is how to do those three things.

## Before it starts — The conversation you have once, properly

Best to have while you can still look at each other in-person.

- **Are we doing this?** Say it out loud. Not assumed.
- **What happens if one of us changes their mind?** Agree that it gets said, not acted on quietly.
- **What are we telling people?** Same story, both of you.
- **What are we telling the kids?** The truth, at their level.
- **Who handles the money?** In writing.

**Say the hard sentence.** The person going in should say some version of: _if you can't do this, I would rather you tell me than disappear._

It costs nothing and it removes the guilt that makes people vanish instead of talk.

## The phone — Fifteen minutes, and then it stops

Calls are capped, short, and cut off automatically. You cannot resolve anything in fifteen minutes.

- **Set a schedule.** Same days, roughly the same time. Otherwise one of you lives beside the phone and resents it.
- **Do not open with logistics.** Money, mail, and paperwork eat the whole call. Put those in a letter.
- **Do not fight on the phone.** There is no time to finish, and it ends mid-sentence with both of you sitting in it.
- **Never hang up angry.** This is the rule that matters most. The next call might not come until tomorrow, and every one of those hours gets spent inside it.
- **Missing a call is not a message.** Say that out loud now, because at month four it will not feel obvious.

All calls are recorded. So is TRULINCS (the inmate email/phone/money system, all monitored). Assume it.

The mechanics — who can call whom, what it costs, how the minutes run out — are on [phone and messages](/federal-prison-for-families/faq/phone-calls-and-corrlinks) if you are outside, and [phones, mail and communication](/going-to-federal-prison/faq/phone-calls-mail-and-email) if you are in.

## Write letters

Underrated, and the thing couples who make it have in common.

- A letter is the only thing that can be physically kept in there. It will get read twenty times.
- Hard conversations belong here. Writing forces you to think, and it gives the other person time to respond instead of react.
- Ordinary detail beats reassurance. What you ate, what the dog did, what the weather was. It keeps the person inside in your life rather than outside it.
- Send something on a schedule, even when there is nothing to say.

Check the mail (paper letters, opened and screened) rules before you send anything. Stickers, glitter, and full page counts get letters rejected, and the person you sent it to never knows it existed.

What gets a letter thrown away, and how to make one unrejectable: [the mail chapter](/federal-prison-for-families/guide/how-mail-works).

## What kills it — The four things that actually end it

None of these is a betrayal and none of them announces itself. They are ordinary conditions of being apart, and each one is survivable once it has a name.

1. **Imagination**

The person inside has unlimited time to think and no way to check anything. A missed call becomes a story. A short letter becomes a story.

This is the leading cause of death for these relationships, and it is not really about trust. It is about having nothing else to do.

_Inside:_ when you notice the story starting, that is boredom talking. Go do something.

_Outside:_ a two-line "I'm fine, busy day, talk Thursday" prevents more damage than a long letter next week.

2. **Editing**

The one outside stops mentioning the hard things because the other one cannot help. The one inside stops mentioning the hard things because it will only cause worry.

Six months of that and you are two people exchanging weather reports.

Tell each other real things. Delay the news if the timing is cruel, but do not delete it.

3. **The gap**

One life keeps moving. The other stops. New coworkers, new problems, a haircut nobody has seen — against the same day, again, on repeat.

That asymmetry is nobody's fault and it is permanent for the duration. Naming it helps. Resenting it does not.

4. **Money**

One income, plus calls, plus commissary (the prison store), plus gas to visits. Resentment about money is usually resentment about something else, but it starts here.

Agree on a monthly number and stop renegotiating it every call.

What the number should be, what gets deducted before they see it, and why sending more can cost more: [the money chapter](/federal-prison-for-families/guide/where-the-money-goes).

## Your half — The two of you do not have the same job

This is the part where the page stops addressing both of you at once, because from here the work is different. Read your own column. Then read the other one, because knowing what the other person is being told is most of the point.

If you're the one inside

- They are running your whole life alone. Say thank you more than feels necessary.
- Do not interrogate. Who, where, why, how come. It never gets you what you want.
- Do not punish them for having a life. You want them to have one.
- Do not make them your only support. It is too much weight and it will break.
- Do not burn a month of minutes on one bad night.
- Ask about their day first. Every time.

If you're the one outside

- You are allowed to have a bad day and say so. Performing fine is exhausting and it comes through anyway.
- You are allowed to have a life. Go to the thing. Take the trip if you can.
- Do not lie to protect them. Small lies compound and the discovery is worse than the news.
- Do not manage their feelings at the cost of your own.
- You are allowed to leave. That is not a betrayal and it is not a verdict on you.
- Get support that is not them. A friend, a therapist, a group.

More on the part written for you alone: [your life](/federal-prison-for-families/guide/who-you-tell-and-how-you-hold-up), and [the support groups run by other spouses and moms](/resources/federal-prison-support-groups).

## Visits — The crash is real and nobody mentions it

The visit itself is the easy part. What neither of you is warned about is the day after it, and the quiet decision people make to stop coming rather than keep feeling it.

- The first one is harder than either of you expects. It is much easier the second time.
- The crash afterward is real, for both of you. Everyone gets it, nobody mentions it.
- Plan something for after. Do not drive six hours home alone with it if you can help it.
- Do not stop visiting to avoid the crash. That trade looks rational and is not.
- Check the dress code every time. People get turned away at the door after driving all night.

Approval, the points system, and the dress code: [the visiting chapter](/federal-prison-for-families/guide/what-a-visit-is-like). Whether the room is even open this week: [lockdown alerts](/lockdown-alerts/subscribe).

## If it ends — Leaving is not the same as disappearing

It ends for a lot of people, and it is not a moral failure.

- **Say it.** Disappearing is worse than leaving. Months get spent constructing explanations otherwise.
- **Say it in a letter, then on a call.** Not on a call alone. It needs to be something that can be read again.
- **Do not do it right before a holiday or a court date.**
- **Be clear.** Ambiguity is a kindness that turns into a year of hoping.
- **Sort the practical things separately.** Money, kids, and mail are not part of the conversation about whether you are together.

If you are the one being left: you cannot fix this from in there, and trying will make it worse. Let it be. Do your time.

## Coming home — Expect a renegotiation, not a restoration

The reunion is rarely the one either of you rehearsed. That is normal and it is not a sign of anything.

- The person coming home spent a long time somewhere that made every decision for them. They may not be able to pick a cereal. Let them practice.
- The person who stayed ran everything alone and got good at it. Handing pieces back is harder than it sounds, both directions.
- The halfway house (the halfway house before release) comes first, and it is stricter than you think. It is not the homecoming yet.
- Physical closeness may take longer than either of you expects. Do not read anything into it.
- Expect a renegotiation, not a restoration.

Start counseling before the friction, not after. It is much easier to begin when nothing is currently on fire.

Give it a year before you judge how it is going.

The rules of the last stretch: [the halfway house and home confinement](/getting-out-of-federal-prison/halfway-house-and-home-confinement) if you are the one coming home, [coming home](/federal-prison-for-families/guide/when-they-come-home) if you are the one waiting for them.

**Need help with this? Just ask.**

These pages cover the general rules. Your situation has details they don't. Email me a question. **Answers are free** , and "you don't need to pay anyone for this" is my most common answer.

[josh@federalprisondude.com](mailto:josh@federalprisondude.com?subject=Staying%20together)

I answer in the order received, usually within a couple of days. I have a day job. If your situation genuinely needs more than an email, I take a limited number of consults, so say so and we'll work it out.