She Wanted Her Husband Out of Federal Prison Until He Was Home

I want to talk about something I am totally unqualified to talk about: going to prison with a spouse. I have learned from many people in our community who went to prison married. I learned from the defendant, the prisoner, and the spouse, and today I want to share two specific stories, with their permission. Welcome to the White Collar Advice community.

I'm Justin Paperny. I appreciate all of the concern for the new Invisalign. My friends say I haven't complained this much since I went to prison.

They put the dots on now, and I can't take this thing out because I've already hit the two-hour out-of-the-mouth max for the day. So it's in. Please like and subscribe if you find value in this useless Invisalign content. Let's get to work.

How can two guys with the same background, same look, same balding, same loving and supportive spouses, same pretty much everything, end up at the same prison (which they did), live about nine yards apart (what is that, 27 feet? You like the math?), and have such fundamentally different experiences? I want to talk about it. It's my channel, damn it. I've earned the right.

Jim Rohn said you are the average of the five people with whom you associate. So here's some prison advice I'm equipped to give. When you get to prison, be very careful about the friendships you form. You may live nine feet or nine yards from someone, but if on that first day you start hanging out with dudes who bitch and complain, who say "it ain't my fault, it's somebody else's fault," that's what your prison term is going to look like.

What's interesting about both of these cases is that both men had really difficult experiences before they went to prison. They were equally angry and mad at everyone but themselves.

In one of the cases, I recently filmed a YouTube Short about it, the spouse told her husband, who was home from prison, "It was easier with you in prison."

Think about how hard that is to hear. You go to prison. All you want to do is come home. Then the post-prison experience is so miserable that your spouse says it was easier with you in prison. That was a while back, and things have improved because they're working on it. But it didn't change the pain of that reentry, and that comes back to what he did in prison.

He gets there and immediately buys into nonsense. Despite being ineligible for compassionate release, he flushes money down the toilet with some jailhouse hustler for a compassionate release motion that gets denied. He feels exploited. He gets angrier. Then he buys into the hype that he should have gone to trial, that if he had, he would have won and never gone to prison. Wasted time and energy fixating on things he could not control, rather than trying to build his way out of that hellhole.

These things don't just happen. You don't suddenly come home and your wife says, "It was easier when you were in prison." It's incremental. She would visit him, and he would complain. This is awful. This is a terrible experience. The food, the bunk, the job, the cold showers. It's not fair. After a few visits, she started looking at her watch: okay, I'm ready to go home now. It happens gradually, over time.

Now let's talk about someone I describe in my new book, After the Fall, in Chapter 12, called "The Boulder." Do not buy the book. It's on Amazon. Don't buy it. I give all of my books away for free. It should be up on White Collar Advice next week.

I write about Daniel, who lived in that same prison, very close to this other man. Let me read you a snippet.

He would call me from prison.

"I want to talk about the blog."

"What about it?"

"I'm done."

"Why?"

"No one reads them. They suck, and the staff here couldn't care less. I've written 39 blogs since I got to this dump. I write them and email them to Karen. Then she puts them online. You know how many people read the one she posted Tuesday?"

"How many?"

"Four. Two are probably Karen checking her typing."

"You seem angry. It probably does no good to tell you the Stoics would say two is better than one."

"I'm not sure that's what they would say."

"I'm not sure either."

The point is, many people fixate on who is going to read their work. They'll only do it if it advances their release date or leads to a shorter sentence. If that doesn't happen, was all of that effort wasted?

Or perhaps, like Daniel, as much as he loved to call that place a dump, you could say to yourself: I told my wife, Karen, that I would stop making this harder for her. I would stop the blaming, the excusing, the weight gain, the slobbiness. I'm always disheveled. I've had enough. I promise you, honey, I'm going to write in prison. I'm going to document what I'm learning. Just read it. I'm going to do my best.

Was he discouraged when his case manager threw it in the trash? Sure. Was he discouraged when friends didn't read the blog and he thought they would be interested? Sure.

But you know what his highest value was? It wasn't getting out of that dump early. It was proving worthy... I can't even talk with this Invisalign in. Proving worthy of the love and support of his lovely wife, Karen.

So on days he wanted to quit, he knew he couldn't, because she would say, "Here you go again. You made a promise and you didn't follow through."

What we don't discuss enough is this: even if the work doesn't get you out as quickly as you'd like, what does your prison term actually look like? You're probably pretty productive. If you're going to write a blog people will read, there's only so much you can say about how far you ran or what you ate in the chow hall. So it pushed him to get creative. To wake early, as I like to say, and do work while the dorm was sleeping. To read with a purpose, share those book reports on his blog, and discuss them with his family. To let the time serve him.

I'm not even going to tell you whether he got out early, because frankly, in the end, he didn't care, and neither do I. He proved worthy of the love and support of his family.

And guess what life was like after prison? Phenomenal. Fantastic. Why? He found perspective on the inside.

Are you finding perspective as you go through this wretched, sickening, terrible system? Are you focused on the blessings that remain in your life? A spouse standing alongside you, children who love you, resources that may remain, the fact that you're able to self-surrender. Maybe you got a shorter sentence. Maybe you'll benefit from First Step Act credits that many people in that prison will not have. What is your level of appreciation and gratitude?

Or are you fixated on things you can't control, on how unfair this is? I know a lot of it is unfair. I've been doing this for 17 years. I've seen a lot. I know it's unfair, but that doesn't lessen your responsibility to lead.

And don't do this work only if it's going to get you out early. No one can predict how quickly you'll get out. I know how badly you want certainty, and ain't nobody able to provide it. No one.

So here's how I'll wrap up this video. People love you. They support you. They need you. They need to see that you can overcome this, or as I say, pick yourself up after the fall. You have an obligation to lead with dignity.

What to consider before you surrender

• Choose your friends on day one. You can live 27 feet from another man and serve a completely different sentence. If you start the first week with the guys who complain and blame everyone else, that's what your term will look like.
• Find out if you qualify before you pay for anything. One man paid a jailhouse hustler for a compassionate release motion he was never eligible for. It got denied, and he came out of it angrier and poorer.
• Listen to what your visits sound like. If every visit is about the food, the bunk, and the cold showers, your spouse will start checking her watch. That's how a wife ends up saying, "It was easier with you in prison."
• Make one promise and keep it. Daniel promised Karen he would write. He wrote 39 blogs, about four people read one of them, and his case manager threw his work in the trash. He kept writing anyway.
• Don't judge the work by your release date. No one can promise you'll get out early. The work changes how your days inside go, and what home is like when you get back.
• Count what you still have. That might be a spouse who stands with you, children who love you, the chance to self-surrender, or First Step Act credits that many men in that prison won't get. Those matter more than any buzzword about the Second Chance Act or RDAP.

Don't do what I did for three and a half years with the cheeseburgers and chewing tobacco. Don't do that. They're watching. They're studying. They're assessing. You're the leader. I need you to respond accordingly.

So as you get ready to go to the wrong side of prison boundaries, I want you to fixate less on all the buzzwords I hear every single day in my business. Second Chance Act, First Step Act, RDAP. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. It's not as important as you think. What's most important is this: what are you doing to prove worthy of love and support?

Just do it. Time is ticking. Do not let this become a life sentence.

Watch the full video HERE.