When I arrived at Virginia’s Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in 2003, carrying a 603-year prison bid for murdering my husband and the trauma of a nightmarish marriage and its apocalyptic conclusion, romance was the last thing on my mind.

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Growing up in Fredericksburg, Virginia, I had no memory of ever meeting a gay person. The only public acknowledgment of homosexuality I remember was the occasional sneered “faggot!” hurled by the guys in my high school who passed footballs, not classes.

My relationships with men were as uncomfortable as ill-fitting shoes. Still, I ended up checking all the boxes: marriage, three lovely children, a two-story house in a gated community. But my Prince Charming? Far from it. Behind our fairy tale facade was a brutal reality that culminated with my conviction for murder.*

My husband was charming, handsome and athletic. He even had a dreamy English accent. But after we got married, I learned he was also verbally, emotionally and sexually abusive. I’ll give him this: He never beat me. No, his thing was to rape me, again and again. Whether I feigned enthusiasm, fought back or lay there like the corpse I longed to be, it made no difference. I tried to leave, but he always hunted me down.

I learned to slap on a smile so convincing that not even my own family could tell what was happening. I was convinced I could keep everyone safe as long as I placated my husband until nightfall.

Then, one night in 2001, I was pregnant with our fourth child when I snapped.

The rest of that night is a horror I’ll never forget, but can never describe. Tragically, he did not make it out of that night alive.

During my first six months in prison, I was in a state of shock and my mental health was on edge. Hard questions circled in my mind on repeat: Would my children be OK? Would I ever see them again? And how could I, a person who never raised a hand to hurt someone, let myself get to a place where this could even happen?

My cellmate was so worried—or irritated—by my constant weeping that she reported me to the building manager as a suicide risk. An officer did a perfunctory check-in, where I reassured him I was OK. That level of despair can only be sustained for so long, and after a year, I emerged from my fugue of grief and remorse and realized that somehow I’d have to cobble together some semblance of a life.

I gravitated to women serving long sentences like mine, ones who had found purpose in this chaotic place. As I became more aware of my surroundings, I realized something odd: Most of the women—many of whom identified as straight when they entered prison—were openly involved in romantic relationships with other incarcerated women. Even officers and staff accepted such couples as the norm, and virtually every decision these women made was based on their relationship status.

Signing up for classes, picking a prayer service, sneaking out to the dining hall together, “delaying and hindering” on the yard as it closes—all to steal a few precious intimate moments together in semi-privacy. The ultimate goal was to be housed together.

While physical interactions are against the rules, they happen. Somehow people always manage to find places off-camera to steal a kiss, or more.

Still, there are risks. Sometimes institutional charges for sexual contact between inmates are given out. But usually this only happens when officers can’t turn a blind eye, like when they find two women in the same bunk at count time or when a couple is caught hooking up in the showers.

The latter only happens when another inmate snitches and the correctional officer (CO) feels forced to write a charge.

I even knew someone who got a charge because she gave someone an air kiss. It should be noted that the CO who wrote that ticket had gotten pissed off at the girl the day before, so this could have been payback.

For the most part, though, such relationships are largely ignored by staff unless they can be used as leverage by the prison. This typically happens when one of the women in a partnership has gotten busted for something serious—often possessing drugs—and has information that an officer might care about. A woman will spill a lot of tea if she is at risk of being separated from her boo.

For the first 15 years of in prison, I avoided romantic relationships. But as my stay continued, it freed me to acknowledge that I was, and probably always had been, primarily attracted to women.

I remember in my early high school years when I’d have sleepovers with my best friend. I’d lie in my white canopy bed as she slept beside me, overwhelmed and confused because I was feeling all the things I pretended to feel for the boys in my high school that my friends and I would giggle about. I knew I was different from them, but boys were safer. If I didn’t admit my attraction to the same-sex, then I wouldn’t have to be vulnerable or risk judgment and rejection.

In prison, though, it seemed like everybody felt the way I did.

Still, my marriage had made me very cautious, and prison is full of damaged people. Sadly, a vast majority of the women here have experienced intimate partner violence prior to incarceration, so that tends to be what they seek out. Every so often, an epidemic of bruised jaws and black eyes breaks out. Straight women are often turned out by fellow inmates.

As for me, I began my first prison relationship in 2016. It was a time when I had worked through most of my emotional mess, and I was astonished when the cute brunette in my college history class started talking to me.

It took me a while to recognize that she was flirting with me. It had always been hard for me to believe that anyone could be interested in me, much less a beautiful, brilliant girl 20 years younger than I was. By that time in my bid, I felt about as sexual as an amoeba. But when Julia, a pseudonym since she is no longer in prison, started chatting me up after class and passing me notes, we got closer. Over time, the notes got more personal, then frankly inviting.

After being alone for so many years, I felt like I was 16: reckless and besotted. I fell fast and hard.

Julia was the first person I ever truly loved. When we got together, it was the talk of the compound. I even had several COs ask me if the rumors were true and express disbelief when I admitted it. I apparently had a reputation as someone too straight for such a dalliance.

After being so cautious and obedient during the first 15 years of my bid, Julia turned me into a different person. We were mad for each other, and the risk of getting caught heightened everything.

I remember sending her a note explaining that when a boy liked a girl during the 1980s, when I grew up, he’d make her a mix tape. While I couldn’t make her a tape, I created a playlist for her on my media player of songs by the bands I’d grown up with: The Smiths, Madness, The Cure. We just talked and talked, discovering all the things we shared a love of.

Our first “date” was meeting up at the gym for recreation. It was always packed with inmates, which allowed us to cuddle on the bleachers undetected.

After a year of being together, a sympathetic staffer moved Julia and I to the same housing unit. The day I moved in, a friend offered to 10-4 for us (look out for COs) so we could be alone. When I came out an hour later to thank her, she looked at me appraisingly and said, “Your shirt’s inside out.” She paused. “And backwards.”

Living in the same wing with Julia was wonderful. I did everything I could to take care of her, to woo her. When she told me she’d never been to a schooldance because of her conservative Catholic upbringing, I planned an Under the Sea-themed prom for her. I made streamers, banners, even a disco ball and hooch-spiked punch. My roommate did my makeup and my hair in an 80s style. My whole wing—who was in on the plan—cheered as I went to her room to present her with the paper flower corsage I’d made for her. I then escorted her to my cell, where we spent the next two hours dancing.

As our relationship evolved, she committed to me: She even put in paperwork to legally change her last name to mine. I gave her all my trust and I believed her promise when she said I was her forever.

But Julia had a short sentence, and when she moved to the reentry wing, I knew something was up. When we met at rec, the only place I could reliably see her, she would barely look at me. When I tried to hug her, she’d pull away. When I begged her to just tell me what was happening, she hedged.

One day, I confronted her at the chow hall. She admitted that she’d cheated on me. She then proceeded to give back my ring and necklace. And my heart was broken.

I lost twenty pounds in a month and swore I’d never let anyone get close to me ever again—especially someone like her, who, like many other inmates, was gay for the stay.

But in 2021, I met Paige, a petite Kiwi woman. The attraction was instantaneous and mutual. And yet I fought it, telling her I could never be in another relationship.

As I healed over time, though, I learned that Paige—who also asked to use a pseudonym for this article—had a knack for willing things into existence. A week after we met, our wing had a fourth of July party. Before the event, I was sitting in the dayroom wrapping prizes for bingo when Paige plunked down at the table and, without preamble, said, “I think we need to talk.”

We realized there that the feelings were too intense to ignore.

And we were right. Paige and I just celebrated our fifth anniversary.

While Paige and I are cellmates, we live platonically. It’s not that we aren’t still attracted to each other, but there’s a tremendous amount of stress and energy involved in maintaining a physical relationship in prison, with the COs and snitches, and we’d rather focus on being peaceful and productive. I have goals that would be derailed if we got a charge; I’m up for geriatric parole in two years, I’m taking UVA classes and Paige and I live in the Honor Unit. All that would disappear if I got a ticket. Plus, I’ve learned that the longer you go without sex, the easier it is to do without. Most importantly, our emotional intimacy and support are too important to risk. She will be released and deported to New Zealand in two years. And if I ever make parole, we’ll get married and try to find somewhere that’ll accept us. God, I pray that happens.

Most prison romances are not as stable and enduring as ours. They’re transactional or fueled by dramatic fights that lead to breakups.

But even behind these prison walls, the most inhumane of places, our humanity demands that love be given and received, and no prison regulation can prevent that.

I’ve been Paige’s only partner in prison. “I was never looking for a girlfriend,” she told me, “but I’ve always believed anything can happen. … I came to prison and found the love of my life, who I want to do all those courageous, love story-type things for and with. Who’d think something so wonderful could come from such a dark place?”

She might have been speaking for herself, but she was also speaking for me and so many of us that have found love in the most unlikely of places.

Before I met Paige, I had known lots of different kinds of love: parents, children, friends. But with her, I’ve learned love can blossom even after giving up on ever loving someone that deeply.