I have a pretty good idea of the type of women I would like to date in the future. Unfortunately, as I’m told by a couple of prisoners and friends of mine, my ideal mate “does not possess the requisite low self-esteem it will take to give me a shot.”

I live in a section with a prisoner, we’ll call him Mike, who has taken the time to read every one of my articles and has gotten to know me in the past few months.

He asks a lot of questions and rarely gives an opinion, so when Mike predicted that women, specifically as pertains to “rejection or a requisite lowering of standards,” will be my toughest challenge moving forward, I didn’t just shrug it off. I sought a second opinion.

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I asked another prisoner. We’ll call him Doug, to whom I often go for advice, for his opinion on the matter.

Doug asked me a couple of questions about what I look for in women. And with his typical humor, he surmised my situation as he saw it.

“So your plan is to find a woman, who up to the point of meeting you has made good decisions in her life, and you’re hoping her first bad decision is you. Good luck,” he said.

Doug then presented me with some amusing options. He described some women with their own baggage, the least of which being either a crack habit or a mammoth Twinkie addiction, and told me I should gear my expectations toward this reality to avoid catastrophic disappointment.

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Now obviously, I haven’t spent a whole lot of time in the dating world since becoming a felon, but at the point in the year and half after I had racked up my charges, and before I was sent to prison, I told my parents I wanted to bring a girl over to meet them.

Later I overheard them talking to each other, and my mother said to my father, “Brian says she’s a nice girl.”

To which my father rhetorically asked, “She’s dating Brian, how nice of a girl can she be?”

That really stuck with me, not because I was hurt by the comment, but because it made me realize people close to me will be judged based on their association with me. (By the way, it turns out both my assertion and his point had merit. The girl in question kicked me to the curb shortly after her parents, learning of my past, strongly suggested she do so.)

I brought up my unintentional eavesdropping one morning to my father when he and I were carpooling to go play basketball. He defended his position with a question: “Do you think I associate with or even know any other drug addicts or criminals?”

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Obviously rhetorical. In an effort to help me understand, his next statement was delivered not in his same matter-of-fact style, but with some pity and a little compassion, he conceded, “I would never know someone like you if you were not my son.”

I have come to realize I come with an incredible amount of baggage (i.e. past drug addiction, criminal history, failure, etc.) There will be a sizable group of women unwilling to give me a chance (I should say a second chance because I failed my first one), and that’s just the way it is.

I believe I will reach a particular socioeconomic class through hard work, but that won’t remove the stigma attached to my past.

I’m told there are plenty of women who are specifically attracted to ex-cons. However, I think that would probably be a big red flag for me.

I shared my lack of enthusiasm with Doug for women who may have “a thing” for criminals, and in response he shared a quote from Groucho Marx: “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”

I don’t think my plight is quite so desperate. I have confidence there may be women who will give ex-cons a chance, not just because of their history, but in spite of it.

The relational struggles ex-cons face is not a subject that gets much attention, though I am sure it is a real thing. (I’m just not sure what to do about this one.)

I honestly had not given it much thought until Mike’s prediction. I appreciate Mike’s vote of confidence in believing the traditional challenges, like navigating parole and being gainfully employed, will not be so much of an issue for me.

However, I disagree with his entire assessment, and I am not ready to accept what I consider to be exaggerations by my buddy Doug. I may end up being wrong, but I don’t feel I need to spend any energy worrying about it now.

Brian Wood, formerly of Layton, is an inmate at the Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison. He pleaded guilty to nine felony charges for offenses from 2011 to 2014, including counts of burglary, drug possession and prescription fraud. He could spend up to 35 years in prison, depending on parole hearings.