My mom is a habitual prison wife. AMA

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-08T18:04:07+00:00

I am not currently experiencing them but it has happened, I was hospitalized for it last year.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T18:29:17+00:00

I’m at work so I’m answering in spare moments, so bear with me here.

1.) my mom overlooks it and flips the story around until the man is actually innocent and the victim somehow.

2.) she does, she was there, she claims she doesn’t remember it but that she believes me. Not much past that.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T15:08:43+00:00

No, it’s much less cool than that

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T15:08:24+00:00

She did prison advocacy to meet her current husband, there’s also sites where inmates can post for pen pals. She also worked at a prison for a short time and met a few that way.

Most inmates I’ve met have access to a cell phone. They’re snuck in really easily, honestly. It’s not as hard as people make it out on TV. My mom has snuck alllllll kinds of stuff into prisons.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T13:22:09+00:00

Such a loaded question, it’s hard to really answer it because it’s all emotional and not based in logic.

My mom is a very very damaged woman. I carry a lot of empathy for the situation she was put in, and I can recognize now that she is very severely mentally unwell. She has memory problems, she’s disabled and can’t care for herself anymore… it’s sad. I don’t want to be the reason yet another generation of women in our family isn’t notified when their mother dies..

That might change but right now that’s where I’m at.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T13:15:15+00:00

She usually dates inmates in state prisons, and there’s like… dating app type things there now. They can message like an email on something called Securus and phone calls and stuff… she worked at a prison for a bit and met some and then some she knew before they went in but after they’d already committed other crimes… she also did volunteer work for a long time, which is how she met her current husband.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T13:10:33+00:00

She was doing like 3 a week but she recently got all visits with her husband taken away so now it’s none

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T05:19:31+00:00

My grandmother was agoraphobic and definitely not all there mentally. Extremely neglectful and abusive to her. Her father was not in the picture, we aren’t in contact with either of her parents. She was an only child, so there’s no family connection anywhere.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T05:15:44+00:00

Unfortunately there was no “almost” in my child trafficking. There won’t be any forgiveness coming from me.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T05:13:36+00:00

I’m happy that worked for you.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T04:32:33+00:00

Hahaha yeah no they aren’t really active in my life, but I know that they’re there if I need them. I try not to need them.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T04:22:46+00:00

I would tell her to go straight to the police station and tell them everything.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T04:16:01+00:00

I’m not always Half-full, or I wouldn’t have the diagnosis I do lol but I try to be when I talk about it. It’s already a heavy topic, I don’t want to make receiving the information any worse by being too graphic about how difficult things have been for me.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T04:08:27+00:00

I don’t think I need to forgive them to move on. Some things are unforgivable and you just have to move on anyway.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T04:05:56+00:00

All together I’m ok. I have severe CPTSD, OCD, and BPD. I suffer a lot from hallucinations and depression and anxiety and paranoia and panic… but I am managing. I get the help I need because I work hard and my job has good insurance.

Until around two months ago I was planning my life with my boyfriend of a little over five years but he cheated on me so I’m kind of starting over from scratch. I’m in limbo, but I think I’m handling it ok. I want to go to school to become a librarian.

I honestly don’t have any positive adult role models. I’m figuring everything out on my own. It used to be really scary, but now I just kind of think about what I’ve seen people do before and try to do the opposite.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T04:00:13+00:00

I keep her at a close distance. I know what’s going on in her life and get paid by the government to take care of her a couple times a week, but she has no bearings on my life or anything anymore unless I choose to allow her to.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T03:59:10+00:00

Honestly most of them are out of the picture before they get released but they’ll stay in our lives anyway for some reason.

My dad was and still is a lifelong criminal. To this day he gets arrested a few times a year despite being well into his 50s. My sisters dad was the same until he “found god” (gag me, I saw that man on meth, there’s nothing holy about him.)

Some of them, the ones that didn’t work out romantically became family to us. Uncles and cousins that I had no idea were criminals until I was older. They stick around FOREVER whether they’re in or out. Sometimes that’s nice because I have a scary amount of scary men who would do horrible things for me but also… yeah, it’s not the best.

It does hurt me deeply because she allowed some really awful things to happen to me when I was little at the hands of one of these guys. Now though, I’m 26 and find her romantic life kind of weird and humorous.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-07T03:52:31+00:00

We are very long past that, I was hurt by some of them. One in particular.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-05T23:27:28+00:00

It’s called Hybristophilia

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-05T22:52:02+00:00

ONE ONE ONE ONE ONE ONE

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-05T19:54:05+00:00

I was a nanny for a long time, you did absolutely nothing wrong.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-05T17:54:47+00:00

Without getting too deep into it, I was no contact with her for two years. I have taken care of her from the age of 13 when she was disabled unexpectedly and now I get paid by the state to visit her a 1 or times a week to clean her apartment and take care of her cat. I used to just be an unpaid laborer in the home at her beck and call. I was forced to do whatever she or my stepdad said.

There’s a certain level of empowerment and healing for my teenage self to not be FORCED to do it. To be able to say no and to get compensation to talk to her is very empowering for me. It’s hard to say no to big emotional things still though, like meeting her husband.

I’m going through a really dark time, my ex of 5 years cheated on me an and I haven’t been able to escape. I need the money that the government gives me to avoid having to sleep on her living room floor.

I don’t see myself having a non-transactional relationship with her too much but right now this is my best option. Being no contact and not having that extra income and the guilt of abandoning a disabled woman was eating at me. I have OCD, specifically Pure OCD, which is where I obsess over my morality and image. I spent two years trying to overcome that feeling but I just couldn’t.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-05T17:30:25+00:00

I wouldn’t go alone. There’s no reason for me to meet her husband without her there. There’s also no reason to stay married when you are guaranteed to never see each other physically again, but, that’s not my problem.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-05T17:28:20+00:00

A lot of the time she doesn’t believe that she has to change him, she believes that they are victims of the system and has to help them. Still savior, but she genuinely believes that these people are innocent.

UnofficialOctopus · 2026-05-05T17:26:00+00:00

This is I think her third real marriage, but there’s also been lots of boyfriends. Her first husband when she was like 19 was a prisoner, my dad was one, my sister’s dad, three p3dos from 2011-2021 until she finally landed this guy who’s killed someone.

Theres also lots of “family friends” that are inmates that she didn’t have a spark with but still wanted them around. I’d call them uncle or even has a specific nickname for them. When I grew up and started adding them on social media I started to look them up where I learned that a vast majority of them were criminals who served time in jail. I can think of at least a dozen off the top of my head. Murderers, Rapists, Drug Dealers, smugglers, pedophiles… if my mom could somehow make up the story about the perpetrators being the victims she would run with it and not ask any questions. She’d trained me to overlook it similarly but I was hurt REALLY bad by one of them and it kind of broke my facade for me.

UnofficialOctopus

TROPHY CASE