'Love After Lockup' Couples Now: Who's still together? What couples have split? Where are they now? (PHOTOS)
PHOTO GALLERY
James Cristia and Alla Subbotina
Love After Lockup, Season 1
End-of-Season Status: Still together
Current Status: Back together after splitting
WE tv
Alla and James began a relationship via a prison pen-pal service while Alla was serving five years for selling heroine. The former model's fresh face, sense of humor and vivacious personality immediately captured James' attention.
Love After Lockup's first season showed Alla being released from prison and beginning her relationship with James in the real world.
However, the real world turned out to be nothing like the fantasy world the couple had dreamed about while Alla was in prison.
Alla ended up relapsing after her release and eventually went off for treatment in a rehab facility, leaving James alone in Chicago.
And in the season finale, Love After Lockup viewers saw James reminiscing and re-reading the letters Alla had wrote him from prison, before jumping forward three months and showing a healthier-looking Alla back from rehab and reunited with James.
But sadly, a post-finale update revealed that Alla violated her parole six weeks after filming ended and was back in prison as a result.
During a Love After Lockup: Where Are They Now? special that aired on WE tv in November 2018, Alla was still in prison and had spent the last seven months there, although James expected she would be released in a few more weeks.
In the meantime, James had a new girlfriend named Chelsea, who lived in Atlanta and he was dating long-distance.
The special also featured Alla and James arguing over why she was back in prison. According to James, Alla had been using drugs again and didn't check in with her probation officer.
However, according to Alla, she was arrested because James told her probation officer she was hanging out with a guy he had been jealous about.
According to a post-special update, James later broke up with Chelsea, and Alla was still incarcerated.
However, hours before the special aired on WE tv, James told took to Instagram and told his followers that although Alla was still in prison, he and Alla were dating again.
"We took some time apart," he wrote, "but in the end our hearts are still attached to one another. I'm still waiting for her."
About two weeks later, James also suggested he had lied in the Where Are They Now? special.
"So I just want to clear somethings up in regards to the where are they now episode," he wrote in a December 11 posting.
"I'm just as obsessed with Alla. Drug use wasn't a factor in her probation violation. I def didn't make things any easier for her. There were times when I wasn't the best partner to her and I regret it."
James then posted another update on Instagram three months later.
"Here's the deal. I fucked up. I abandoned her when she needed me the most. I was shitty to her and a bad partner. I pushed a BS narrative that made her look like shit and made me look like a white knight," he captioned a photo of himself and Alla on March 3.
"A good man wouldn't have left her when she was dealing with shit and in pain and that's exactly what I did. It was weak and it was selfish, you don't give up on the ones you love just because shit gets tough. It remains my single greatest regret."