'Life After Lockup' Couple Derek and Monique Are Engaged

Source: Courtesy / WeTV

When it comes to reality TV regrets, Monique was hard-pressed to think of anything she wishes the cameras didn’t catch — with one exception.

“Oh the whole you know he cheated on me with ten women I wish he wouldn’t never said that,” Monique admitted, before chiding her boo. “At least you could’ve warned me.”

“I was being honest I was telling my truth and it was a truth that should have been shared prior to, but it was an interview and they asked me and I was just being honest,” Derek admitted. “We’re still getting past that, we’re still learning to forgive each other for the things I’ve done. Not so much the things she’s done.”

“One of the things which I didn’t do, but I wish we could have they had longer dialogue on, is the simple part is me being more in this for the love I have for her it’s more so the the snippets in this in the parts where it only shows her treating me catering to me and it doesn’t really show me catering to her and treating her like a queen that she is so it’s that’s why it’s a lot more you’re gonna see you continue to watch you will see that me more transitioning from incarceration to being able to treat her and be more willing to show her my love out in the world.”

Obviously infidelity and trust have been major issues for this couple, but in our conversation they assured us that they’ve been working hard on their relationship to prevent any future missteps.

“The counseling has worked and I have just started anger management just recently, so I’m doing a lot of things to heal and help myself be a better person and that’s one of the things we’ve been doing,” Derek told BOSSIP. “Also, keeping our communication higher because she’s been more so in Cleveland with me daily, so now it’s a stronger relationship in itself. She’s from Chicago and I’m from Cleveland so we went from prison to long-distance, now she’s here so that has helped us be able to talk about the issues that we went through and the things that we’re facing. It’s not so much on being on camera, it’s more so like, ‘Okay this happened, how can I make you feel by saying certain things or doing certain things?’ Because before she didn’t say anything and I’d continue to do something because she hadn’t spoke on it. So now I know to ask, ‘Was that OK? Because sometimes she doesn’t say anything, she’s being unbothered, but it really bothered her.”

“When he first got out of prison we spent two weeks together and then we were long-distance for a minute,” Monique said, agreeing that the distance between them led to a lot of distrust. “Not physically being with him my mind was always wandering, like ‘What’s he doing?’ Now since we spend a lot of time together the trust is definitely stronger. We spend a lot of time together so I don’t feel the need to go through his phone.”

We could definitely see Derek and Monique turning their Life After Lockup fame into a spinoff of their own, so we asked the pair what kind of show they’d want to share with the fans.

“I would wanted to focus on me doing my weight loss journey, me working on my hair and beauty line as far as like wigs, cosmetics,” Monique told BOSSIP. “Us, you know, hopefully a baby.”

“Most definitely working on that,” Derek chimed in. “A baby and then some helping her with her weight loss journey and me focusing more on my profession, being a personal trainer/physical therapist and our business ventures and planning for our big day. Just continuing to navigate in our relationship on TV, showing our strong points and how we’ve overcome some things is inspiring. We’ve been through it, we dealt with it and it was all on TV and this is how we’ve done it and really show the world that it’s possible. We’ve been through things everyday people go through and still make it work being happy together because we figure it out every day.”

That’s a show we’d definitely tune in for.

Follow Derek and Monique on Instagram.