Dr. Ish Major of ‘Love After Lockup: Relationship Rehab’ on How a Healthy Relationship Can Keep People Out of Prison
Dr. Ish Major is no stranger to counseling couples in crisis. A board-certified psychiatrist who’s co-hosted We TV’s Marriage & Family Boot Camp Reality Stars, Major specializes in helping people navigate the wilds of dating and marriage. But his latest project involves a group of people with who “present a unique set of challenges,” he told Showbiz Cheat Sheet.
‘Relationship Rehab’ couples need ‘a special skillet’ to move forward, Dr. Ish Major says
Love After Lockup: Relationship Rehab follows five couples from the Love After Lockup franchise as they embark on a unique group retreat, participating in powerful exercises and one-on-one sessions designed to get them to confront their issues and determine whether their relationships can be repaired or if they are beyond saving. The result is a powerful experience for both the participants and the show’s viewers.
“You’ve got to offer them a very different skillset,” Major said of how he approached working with the cast, which includes fan-favorite LAU pairs like Justine and Michael and Melissa and Louie. “It takes a special skillset to reenter your life after all this time away and get to know this whole other human knowing that you’ve got some parts that you’re not 100% sure if you’re going to be able to share or not. And so I think in offering them that special skillset, we ended up offering the audience something really, really special to watch because it’s not something you can see anyplace else.”
Major came to Relationship Rehab following a two-year stint as the vice president of healthcare equity for a company providing treatment for substance use disorders. While there, he designed a reentry program for people “coming home from jail and struggling with rehab and reentering their life.” That ended up being the perfect springboard for his work on the Love After Lockup spinoff.
“I took everything I learned there, everything we designed there and really helped shape it and modify it and develop it, especially for our folks,” he explained.
‘Love After Lockup’ alums are more than their ‘worst decision’
The stars of Relationship Rehab arrived at the retreat with a variety of issues, whether or not they had been incarcerated. On the show, cast members – even those who came into the experience defensive and closed off – gradually open up about drug use, sexual assault, parental abandonment, and other deep emotional and psychological wounds.
“It’s a lot more shame to navigate,” Major said. “There’s a lot of things you’ve got to be able to put down in terms of baggage … the first thing that’s different with the couples on Relationship Rehab is that I wanted to make sure everybody knew you are more than just the worst decision you’ve ever made in your life. We can start there and if you can believe in second chances, then the first thing for you to do is give yourself one and this is a part of that and this is your first step.”
For those who’ve had experience with the justice system, learning to look beyond their mistakes is just the first step. A supportive partner can mean the difference between truly starting over after their release or ending up back behind bars.
“When you think about that recidivism rate, it is sky high,” Major said. “If you’ve been impacted by justice, you’ve been in jail, you’ve been in prison, you’ve got a 75% chance of going back within your first three years out.”
“Having somebody on the outside, that lifeline, it’s more than just this person who loves you, who’s connecting with you, but it’s somebody who believes in you,” he continued. “It’s somebody who can look at you every day and say, ‘I know, I believe you can do it. I believe in you.’ And it’s that power of belief that just builds gradually, slowly, that lets you find some of that personal integrity that you lost when you went inside.”
For cast members who were carrying shame about their pasts, signing up for Relationship Rehab offered an opportunity to bond with others in a judgment-free space.
“We had a group of people who understood exactly how each other got to this point,” Major said. “The women in that room were like, ‘Girl, I totally see how you got there because I got there too.’ And the people on the inside who had been on the inside, they’re sitting around a room where there isn’t that judgment, there isn’t that shame, there isn’t that ridicule because they’ve all been through the same thing.”
Love After Lockup: Relationship Rehab airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on We TV. Episodes stream on All Reality.
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