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Love Locked Up: An Exploration of Relationship Maintenance and Perceived Barriers for Women Who Have Incarcerated Partners

ABSTRACT Familial separation due to incarceration present numerous challenges to the enactment of relational maintenance behaviors. This study explored self-reported maintenance behaviors and perceptions of barriers that hinder feelings of connectedness for non-incarcerated women who have a relational partner in jail. Responses from an open-ended questionnaire of 124 non-incarcerated women with relational partners in jail were analyzed to highlight issues of long-distance relational maintenance. Results from an inductive exploratory analysis yielded twelve maintenance behaviors and seven perceived barriers that the women in this study perceive factor into relational maintenance with an incarcerated partner. I organize the relational maintenance strategies in this context by intrapersonal, dyadic, and network-level behaviors. Openness, assurances, and future planning were reported as frequent behaviors utilized by non-incarcerated women to maintain connectedness with an incarcerated partner. These women also identified a lack of intimacy and communication as barriers to relational maintenance with an incarcerated partner. Findings indicate a strong parallel in maintenance behaviors enacted by women with deployed spouses and the women of incarcerated partners. In this context, the restrictions of prison policy and stigma affects the women of incarcerated partners from exploring network involvement as a way to stay connected to an incarcerated relational partner.