I don’t want to type out the details, because it’s a long story and if I abridge it you may be tempted to pass judgment. And the details aren’t the point anyways.
He’s stressing out about it. I’m stressing too, though not as badly as he is.
I tell myself it’d be like being single for a little while. I couldn’t actually go sleep with other guys or anything, but I’d have more free time to hang out with my other friends, catch up on my volunteer hours at the fire station, and bask in some alone time in my bedroom.
If anybody else has more consolation on why this wouldn’t be so bad, please share!
This could be a good opportunity to test your relationship. If you still want him back after he’s been in jail, and he is the same way (I assume no conjugal visits are possible), then you have additional confidence that your relationship can survive stress. If 30 days go by and you find that you’d rather go with someone else and dump him, well, at least you found out now before you married him or something and ended up getting divorced.
The real problem will start when he gets out. Will he have a job? If not, he’s gonna have a record and that will put him at the bottom of every single hiring list. Two months is long enough to get into trouble inside and get his sentence extended.
How far away from you will he be locked up? Can you visit? If not, does your BF understand this? How he copes inside, will be reflected on him when he gets released.
Yeah, the OP totally deserves her boyfriend going to jail and doesn’t deserve any sympathy and suggestions on ways to help herself cope with it!
It’s only up to 60 days. It feels like a long time, but look at this year - Christmas is barely past and it’s already half past April. Up to 60 days means as long as he doesn’t do anything else boneheaded, he’ll be out before the end of Summer.
Keep active with your friends and family. Go out, put yourself into your work and the time will pass.
Well, if the boyfriend’s done something abusive or totally reckless, it totally influences how to approach the OP’s situation. Though it doesn’t sound like he or she is that bothered for his/her safety, or for the boyfriend’s, so I’m assuming this is a minimum-security situation (my WAG? DUI).
You may be afraid of people passing judgment, but when you purposely leave out the that kind of info people are just going to assume the worst and judge you anyway. Hell, if it wasn’t that bad there would be no need to be coy about it. So your own efforts at concealment undermine your intentions by sending the signal “I’m embarrassed about the reason why this happened and he probably deserves it, but I want sympathy anyway”.
Of course that may not be the case at all. But it’s the message you send to others even if you don’t mean to.
Or by posting details you are encouraging the discussion to degenerate into whether he deserved, whether she should stay with him, what sort of person he is etc etc rather than staying on the track of coping strategies.
If it’s anything other than a marijuana-related offense, I’d seriously reconsider the relationship. But I’m not you, OP! So best of luck coping. And seriously, if it wasn’t a marijuana-related offense… think twice.
I’m not going to touch on the reason he’s going to jail. All I’m going to say is that I’m kind of an expert on long distance relationships. My ex-fiance is a Marine in the sandbox, sometimes it was weeks before I heard from him. It was hard not knowing if he had gotten blown up again, but I was just fine living alone. I did miss him a lot. I have friends and a job and my volunteer work. When he was home, we spent all of the time together and it was a bit of a relief to have him gone again.
Maybe I’m not the best one to be posting here, because I’m now in a relationship with someone in a different state.
Will he be able to call you often? That can help a lot. Both of you might consider starting a journal. It helps me to feel connected and when we are together, we can read what had been happening day to day.
First of all, thank you to those of you who posted advice.
Very well put, thank you. I am just asking for advice on coping strategies, nothing more.
There are lots of good nuggets here that I haven’t really considered. You’ve hit on the reason why he’s stressing out so much more than me: this would definitely have a severe impact on his future. In the long term, it hardly affects me at all.
Just out of curiosity, does a criminal record put you at the bottom of every hiring list regardless of the profession you go into? Obviously he wouldn’t go for a government job, but how much does it harm you in the commercial industry? (I mean, I can see why it would, you want someone trustworthy and a criminal record usually isn’t indicative of that.)
I don’t know much about where they’d put him other than that it would be part of the country system and not the federal system, so he’d be within the county. I’m not sure how visitation works in jails, but I think I heard somewhere that you normally get 300 minutes a month for talking on the phone. Which is about ten minutes a day, and when you consider the fact that he’d also probably want to call his mom sometimes, that blows, but at least it wouldn’t be for too long.
To the person who suggested keeping a journal or writing letters, I do like that idea. You’d have limited visitation hours and limited minutes on the phone, but I don’t think they’d limit the amount of words you can write to somebody. Plus, I love writing letters!
Regarding the hiring: depends on the offense. My husband works for the City here, and even though they generally frown on hiring people with a record, they have been known to do it.
So, you know if the City will still hire you, the private contractors will often do it as well.
If he can go to the folks he’s applying to, explain what happened, and maybe bring recommendations from other people, he can probably get hired.
My first husband served some time in jail for a DUI, and it was mostly just embarrassing. He did manage to serve his time on the weekends, since he had a job. Is there any way your boyfriend could do that?
We’re hoping he can do that. Well, actually, we’re hoping he doesn’t have to go to jail. He may not have to serve any time, and 60 days is just the worst case scenario. Doing time on the weekends would still be a bummer (I guess we’d have to dinner and a movie on Thursday night), but it would be much better for his professional situation.