Wish I Would Have Known Ahead of Time

Hopefully my story will help others so they don’t make the same mistakes I did. 

I came on here to support someone in prison not find a love connection. I came for a friendship. I picked someone mannnnny years my senior and with multiple life sentences to serve.

Our letters started off like any great friendship. We quickly started to open up to each other. He is an amazing man in every way. He made decisions which resulted in him never getting out. As time progressed my attachment grew. Had he been outside of prison I had no doubt we would have been dating. I was the one who changed our relationship... I was the one who said something sexual in nature. Soon our letters were not only filled with friendship but we also were romantic and we built this fantasy world. A world where he was out of prison and here with me. He had me connect with his family and I only became more attached. 

Then one day it hit me... he was never getting out. Ever. We would never spend the holidays together putting up a tree together. We would never go on dates. We would never be allowed to be sexually intimate. We wouldn’t sit together in our rockers and grow old next to each other. I would spend my time putting up the tree alone and him in a solitary cell. I would never go on another date and our only “alone time” would be visits behind plexiglass walls. I would most likely never know what it was like to hold his hand. By committing myself to someone with multiple life sentences and no chance of ever getting out I was committing my heart to a lot of pain in the future. I was committing to a celibate lifestyle. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I don’t want to be alone out here forever while my heart is locked up in there. 

By changing our relationship from friends to more I may have unknowingly set myself up for losing my Bestfriend. For letting someone down who has been let down by so many people over years. For giving him hope that he had found someone who would could commit herself to someone who would never get parole. I was swept up in the romantic nature of it all and yes as odd as it may sound it is romantic to find the love of your life by chance on here. 

I’m writing this so that hopefully others who are interested in writing someone doesnt need to make the same mistakes I did. And while I call it a “mistake” I can’t help but feel overwhelming selfish thoughts for all the joy that mistake brought me. My choices hurt him. Someone I Never meant to hurt. Only time will tell if we can go back to just being friends. I should have understood the gravity of our situation. Understood the sacrifices I was committing myself to for next 60+ years in order to love him like he deserves. I wish I would have read something like this before I made that transition from friendship to more.

I wish I would have done a lot of things differently. One thing I’ll never regret was meeting him because he made me a better person.