Perhaps you’ve heard this before:
“I just received your first letter and I already can tell I’m falling in love with you.”
“I know you just started writing me last week, but you are the most amazing person I’ve ever met. We have so much in common.”
“Thanks for your email. Would you ever consider leaving your husband and marrying me? Also, how old are you?”
If any of the above sounds familiar, my guess is that you’ve written to a penpal who became too clingy, too fast. Several people have asked us to write a blog entry on the subject of the clingy inmate penpal.
They might have sent you love poems, a rose made out of toilet paper, handmade jewelry, a jewelry box made of potato chip bags, a hand-drawn card with plenty of hearts and “I love you’s,” or maybe even a 60-page manifesto telling you exactly how and why YOU are the most amazing woman in the world. And I can imagine your initial reaction was, “Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into with this guy?!” Then, after your pencil-sketched portrait arrived, you may have even told yourself, “My (sister, mom, friend) was right, I should have never written to an inmate.”
Before we criticize too much, let’s step back. We must confess than many of our staff members here at Snaptura have, in the past, been guilty of overexuberance toward a brand new penpal. While none of us proposed marriage on our second letter, one of us has had a woman politely inform him that he was “artificially speeding up the getting to know you phase.”
She wrote, “you mentioned how I’m one of the few people you trust. Part of me is flattered, and the other part of me wonders who that could be? I mean, we’re just getting to know one another.”
The question becomes: why? Why did your penpal fall in love with you in a week? Why did you think you were just casual acquaintances, then were shocked when he sent you a love poem and some jewelry? Why did our staff member tell someone he had just met that she was one of the few people he trusted?
Throughout your day, in the free-world, you probably deal with dozens of people of the opposite sex. You go to work and talk to your boss and co-workers. You have a quick conversation with the sandwich artist at your neighborhood Subway. You watch movies with your spouse. You have a parent-teacher conference at your kids’ school. You buy concert tickets from some stranger online and meet them at a gas station adjacent to the freeway to facilitate your shady transaction. (“Um, hey, are you Greg? Hi, I’m Amanda. We said $220, right? And you’re sure they’re 11th row?”). You probably also text a variety of people each and every day. Your inmate penpal is just one of 50, perhaps 100, connections you made that day or week. So, in your mind, he takes up no more than 2 percent of your thoughts. Probably much less.
Now, let’s flip the script. The inmate — he sits in his bed watching TV, waiting for chow. He showers. He reads his Prison Legal News magazine. He plays videogames on his tablet. He reorganizes his locker. He doesn’t see, write, or talk to any woman, often for months at a time. And then, it happens. When he gets the envelope or reads the name on JPay, it doesn’t matter if it says Amy or Becca or Christina or Diane or Elena. It’s a woman’s name, a woman’s handwriting, a purple pen, maybe the letter even smells like perfume. He hasn’t even opened it yet, he knows absolutely nothing about you, but already this is the best thing that has happened to him all week.
So, while you go about your daily routine, with 100 people in your real-life social network (and probably an ungodly amount of Facebook “friends”) you may think of this inmate every now and then. Conversely, after he reads your letter, you are all he thinks about that night, the next morning, and the next day. It doesn’t matter if you’re 18 or 68, doesn’t matter if you’re fat or thin, it doesn’t matter if you’re married or single. You’re a female, and he’s a dry sponge just waiting to soak up your friendship and attention, wanting to learn more about you, wanting you to like him.
He becomes afriad of losing you, afraid of being abandoned. Because, let’s face it — he likely has been abandoned before…probably by a lot of different people. When he got arrested or sent to prison, he may have been abandoned by his family, his friends, his business partners, his girlfriend, perhaps even his children. And the odds are good that he’s been abandoned by at least a few penpals before you.
He likes you. As he reads your letter, you are his life, and he is so afraid of losing you that he ends up overcompensating with letters, drawings, gifts, comic strip clippings from the local newspaper, anything at all to help him feel special and needed and appreciated.
His attention scares the shit out of you. That’s understandable. But before you blame the inmate entirely, think about your own motives and reasons for writing him. Some people who proactively decide to write to an inmate via a penpal website do so because something is off in their lives. Maybe they’re going through a rough patch at work. Maybe they’re battling anxiety or depression. Maybe they have feelings of low self-esteem, and they write because they believe they’ll have less of a chance to get rejected by an inmate than they would on Match or eHarmony.
Many people also write inmates because, quite ironically, it’s safer. Perhaps they are unhappily married and crave an emotional connection without the risk of it turning into a physical affair. The inmate tries to give them what they need, but he moves too fast. The reality is, most inmates mean well. They try their best, they truly do care about the people they write, but often they fall short. Our advice? Just be honest. Tell him to slow the F down. He will listen.
