When a person finds their soulmate, they expect to fall in love, get married and live a long life of wedded bliss.

But sometimes, things don’t turn out the way you expect them too. Sometimes, a person who was your soulmate turns out to be a criminal and becomes an inmate.

If the one you love is behind bars you have two options.

You can divorce that jailbird or you can stay together and live a life of incarcerated bliss.

If you choose option one and get divorced, you won’t be alone. The divorce rate among couples where one spouse is in jail or prison for one year or more is 80 percent for men and close to 100 percent for women- according to this mega list of divorce statistics – so what’s one more. Your process will be largely the same, give or take a few extra steps or hurdles when divorcing someone who is in jail. Even if you don’t live in a no-fault divorce state you can probably divorce your spouse. In some states, being convicted of a felony and facing over a year of incarceration is grounds for divorce.

If you decide to go the second route, good for you. Maybe you are staying together for the kids. Maybe your love was wrongfully accused and convicted. Maybe you are just into bad boys.

Whatever the reason, if you are married to a prisoner, you are probably going to want to visit them. Luckily, unless the prisoner of your heart is very very bad, you should be eligible for regular visitation. Typically, there is a fee for a background check, then you would follow whatever the protocol is for the specific jail or prison that is holding your spouse.

However, if you are looking for a way to get physical with your spouse, there is a much more narrow set of rules that apply. Of course I am referring to the famed conjugal visit, where spouses of inmates can boom boom in a (semi)private room room.

Unfortunately, only 4 states and NO federal prisons allow such visits. So unless your bird is caged in California, Connecticut, New York or Washington, there is probably no jail house Barry White in your immediate future. If you happen to love someone with the same plumbing as you, only New York and California will allow you to get intimate with your spouse in jail.

A few other notes. In all 4 states, these visits are an absolute privilege. Meaning the prisoner of your heart must be on their best behavior behind bars. These programs are disappearing. Recently Mississippi and New Mexico put their conjugal visit programs to bed (zing).

Featured Image By Aelffin – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2303067