Newton,

Having read your post through a few times, I would firstly like to emphasise just how much your support will mean to your husband, even if he isn't saying it. Having been in his position, I know just how he will be feeling, elated to be out and about, able to be with you again but at the same time feeling as though he is playing catch-up, as in many ways he will feel your life has been moving on whilst his has been in stasis. He may find that you are more independent than he remembers, a natural product of effectively having to fend for yourself in the most difficult of circumstances.

He will understandably feel frustrated with the sheer amount of change he is having to encounter in such a short space of time, and might not realise that even though he is the one who has been away from it all, you are also having to make some major adjustments through having him home again. In hindsight, my wife and I were lucky that I had to spend some time in a probation hostel as it gave us time to adjust. It wasn't nice at the time, having to leave home each night to sleep in a dingy room on the other side of the city, but it was temporary and as i say there were positives.

Adjustments take time, as they did with my situation. At first the topic of prison was almost taboo, and would depress the heck out of both of us. But a couple of years later and we can drop it into conversation as casually as if we were talking about something on the telly. Granted, we tend to substitute the words "in prison" with "away", but we both accept that it happened, there isn't a damn thing we can do about it, so we might as well accept it and treat it as a learning curve.

You are quite right though, things will take time. We are talking months rather than weeks, and it will take some adjustments from both of you in order to fit together again.

I would like to paste a portion of a reply I made in an old thread to a partner of an imprisoned offender, in the hope that it may be helpful to you. The sentiment at the end is particularly relevant.

Hi Newton,
Great to hear that your husband is home! Probation officers are all different but I found that mine was brilliant and really supportive. Initially it felt as though he was being intrusive, but provided you consult with them and co-operate they can be a good source of support - we ended up getting on very well and I understood that it was much easier to work with probation than against it. Remember that they will have dealt with people coming out of prison many times over. Initially the licence supervision feels like a noose around your neck,but usually it is gradually relaxed up to the sentence expiry date.
Anyway focus on the positives for now - you are both back together and can argue over who empties the bin and loads the dishwasher to your heart's content!!
All the best,
Andy

---

"To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity" Oscar Wilde.

Hi Andy

Great to hear from you.

You are right probation does seem very intrusive. More so, possibly for us, as they are coming to our house as we live so far away from the office that my husband has to report to. They couldn't see sense and make him report to one that's 10 minutes away. He has to report to one that is nearly three quarters of an hour away as we live right on the county boarder! We don't like him coming here but we were not given any choice!

As you say co-operation is the order of the day and so far so good. We've already had to spend 3 nights on 2 occasions to get our accommodation sorted out. But he was OK with this. Just had to give him the addresses where we were staying. The course is a real pain in the neck as we know he isn't going to finish it as it runs for 16/18 weeks and we are only going to be here a maximum of 5 more weeks.

Don't know about probation in the new area. Looks like we are going to be about half an hour plus from them as well. So we'll wait and see on that one. Cross one bridge at a time I think.

Hopefully, as you say, things will ease up with time. We've heard quite a few people say this happens. Still not sure how much we trust probation, still sitting on the fence on that one. We've heard so many negative things, yours is one of very few positives, read so many negatives that at the moment we're not sure what to think. So we're just going by their rules and hoping that all goes OK.

We are focusing on the positive as much as we can and are trying to work through all this together.

As for the bins......... HIS job!! Dishwasher we share!!

Again great to hear from you. Glad you're back!

Hi M2S

Thank you for your very positive reply and your helpful thoughts and ideas. It is really good to hear this from another perspective (especially and ex inmate), although my husband did read and agree with my first post.

All of what you are saying is so applicable to us that it was like reading something we could have written. We both feel that we would be in a much better 'frame of mind' had we not had to move house so quickly. This is just an added strain on us both. On the plus side at least my husband has had a huge say in where we are going to live this time and so it, hopefully, will feel more like home for him. Already when we talk of prison we talk of him being 'away'. To be honest it's the only way I can deal with it. We talk of it as little as possible but it's hard when you are seeing a probation officer every week. It seems it's always 'in your face' (hate that phrase)!

He didn't have to go into a hostel on release as this place was considered OK for him to come straight back to. Perhaps you are right, a period of adjustment would have been better. We will never know. Going into a hostel was something neither of us wanted and were ready to fight to avoid (how I don't know).

I agree it's going to take months rather than weeks for us both to adjust to living together again. Starting all over again in a new area with new probation officer isn't going to help us. But what has to be has to be. We've managed to get both car insurance and house insurance through the Co-op with no problems with disclosure, we did disclose. To get over the landlord problem we are now buying our own house again as we still had the money from the sale of our house 2 years ago. In that respect we are lucky. We don't need to keep renting and moving on at the whim of landlords. We are not spring chickens any more.

Employment is not a problem as my husband retired before he went away and I retired early last year - although I do some part time work now and again. So he doesn't have that hurdle to cross. I've read too many negatives on employment on UNLOCK for him to even try and get work, even thought he is still young enough (just) to work.

We are hoping that, like you, given more time that things will become more positive and more settled. You post has given us both the strength to realise that things can get better and with tolerance, patience and consideration.

Thank you.

Hi

My husband has now been released, about 3 weeks ago. I've not written before as I wanted to get a better idea of how we are adapting to life together again.

Various things have been quite tricky. The most difficult is that whilst he was inside I moved house so he didn't know where anything was! He gets very angry when he can't find things. I'd also changed the car whilst he was away and had to give him a driving lessons as he had never driven a car with a 6 speed gear box, this didn't go down very well. Also due to moving he didn't know his way around at all and didn't like the fact that he needed directions. Going through his clothes to see what still fitted him was traumatic but needed to be done. There were also some little jobs about the house that needed doing. I'd not done them as he was coming home (lazy)! Talking about anything other than prison was very hard, and still is to a certain extent, but it's still early days.

We've been visited by both probation and the PPU. Everything that has been posted on here about probation is true. Your life is not your own. Do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that. I'm sure things will settle down at some point - we can only hope. His licence conditions are fairly standard (from what we know) for his offence. It's just they have insisted he does ANOTHER course (the value of these courses as has been posted in other threads). He had to start it this week with his probation officer KNOWING we are moving out of the area by the end of April. The new area does not run the same course. Also there is a question that no-one will answer. Doing this course is NOT a condition of his license. So does he really have to do it? or does it come under some 'catch all' condition?

He is getting better being on the 'outside' now but it is taking time. Neither of us can help it but keep referring to when he was in prison. There are things, OK trivial, that I do that makes him think he doesn't know me any more. I lot of reassurance has to be given to calm him down. Today he went out on his own for the first time (we'd run out of milk). I thought the short trip would be the best start for him. When he came back he was all twitchy and said he didn't like it at all. This is something we'll have to work on over time as we can't always be stuck like glue to each other.

The change from prison to home he found quite hard as he was indoctrinated into the prison regime. Up at this time, food at that time, bed at the other time. This is now slowly getting better. He is now enjoying 'real' food now that his stomach has settled. It was really bad for a few days due to change in diet and water (we think).

What hasn't helped is he'd barely been home a week when our landlord gave me a notice to quit and would not tell me why. So we have had to run around like headless chickens to find somewhere else to move to. We cannot be sure if he found out about his conviction as he had been very evasive earlier in the year when I had spoken to him about extending the contract. We've found somewhere now so am ploughing through the paperwork. This is another completely new area but at least we will both need directions (thank goodness for Sat Nav)!

We are just about getting to the end of tiptoeing around each other and being squeaky clean, nice and agreeing with what each of us says. We are used to arguing quite a lot and this seems to be returning.

Life is quite hard as we come to terms with life on the 'outside' and having to move as well. We could have done without that! Stress levels running even higher than they were.

From the last few weeks my view is that things have to be taken slowly and carefully. I have taken the stance 'at least he's home' the rest will come in time. I'm sure it will.

Hi , Good luck it takes time , i can only say from what i found it took me around 6 months ,