Am I Stupid for Falling in Love With a Convicted Felon?

Dear Ms. HeartBeat:
One of my friends that is in prison introduced me to a really nice guy that is doing time in the same prison he is. This guy and I have been talking on the phone for over 5 months, and last month we made it official that we are in a relationship.

I have a five year old daughter and her father is in the prison across the street from where my guy is housed. Her dad doesn’t call, write or make any attempt to communicate with me or his child. The guy that I am dating sends me I love you and I miss you cards. He calls me every single day and he actually shows me love and affection.

We’ve never met face to face, but we have exchanged pictures. He’s had his visits terminated indefinitely at his prior housing prison, so he has to have special acceptance from the Warden for visits. I did a Google search of his charges and he told me about his drug selling charge but not that he had an escape in the second degree charge.

He’s been in prison for the last 8 years and will be coming up for parole late this year. He’s already asked if he can move in with me if he gets paroled, and I of course accepted his offer. I really like this guy because he’s so nice, kind and loving to me, but others are questioning my thinking. What do you think?

Signed,
In Love and Trouble

Dear in Trouble:
Your letter is extremely disturbing to me on so many levels. Let’s start at the beginning.

You have never met this guy face to face, but because he calls you and runs up your phone bill every day, and because he sends you love notes, you are all caught up. You don’t know much of anything about this clown, but you are okay having him under the same roof with your female child? You are okay with being intimate with what is essentially a stranger you’ve talked to on the phone a few times?

See, this is how gullible, naive and desperately lonely women set their children up to be molested, beaten and even killed. That is EXACTLY what you would be doing. Please don’t think that the things I said above won’t happen to you and your baby, because these situations happen all the time. Mothers often think that only strangers molest or rape children, which is flatly not true. The majority of children are sexually molested by someone they and their parents know and trust, which is how that adult gains unsupervised access to them. Live-in boyfriends and step-fathers that are not the fathers of the child are the chief perpetrators.

Your job as a mother is to do all you can to protect your child and keep her safe. Men that come out of prison are strange beings and barely human that should not be around small children. To survive and even thrive in prison, men must eliminate their humanity and all signs of decency and emotion. They must become cold, calculating, heartless and predatory. As a convict in prison you are either the predator or you are the prey – there is no middle position.

If your dude is prey, he is getting assaulted by other guys which means he would be exposing you to HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis and a host of other diseases when he gets out. If your dude is the predator, he is intimidating, beating up and assaulting other men, which means he would have no problem intimidating, beating up and assaulting both you and your daughter. Any man in prison that long, you know there was a lot of one or both going on.

These types of guys freely use people for everything they can get out of them, just like they had to do behind bars. Girl, that fool don’t love you! He worked his game on you to set you up to use you for a place to stay, food to eat, cable television to watch, and money in his pocket.

Don’t you know that as soon as he gets out of prison, he will be ripping and running with every broad he can find? I’m confident that he already has women putting money on his books and visiting him that you don’t even know about because that’s how the game is run. Why get money on your books and attention from just one women, when you can get money, gifts, treats and visits from three or four at the same time? That is why he told you some fantabulous made-up story about losing his visiting rights and needing “special permission.”

You are so naive it’s shocking.

I suggest that you slow your roll and do some serious thinking here. You are on the wrong path of life, and unless you change directions immediately will be putting both your daughter and yourself in serious danger with this fantasy thinking about a romantic happy ever after relationship with this guy.

Next time you talk to him, tell him that you reconsidered and “NO!” he cannot move in with you when he is released. Make up an excuse about your lease or whatever if you have to (which actually may be valid). He needs to take his butt to a paroled prisoner halfway house, get a job, follow strict rules to ease himself back into society, and get himself together.

No man should be allowed to come into your home that you do not know. No man should be allowed to come into your world to lounge around and live off you. No man should have free, unsupervised access to your daughter in any way now or ever.

MsHeartBeat

Relationship and dating advice columnist of Ask HeartBeat! Has enjoyed dishing out insightful yet hilariously funny advice, tersely worded reality checks and "let me slap you upside the head" wake up calls to men and women around the globe since 1991.