Gypsy-Rose Blanchard Explains How New Romance Blossomed with Former Fiancé Ken Urker: 'He Is My First Love' (Exclusive)

Gypsy-Rose Blanchard has found love again after lockup.

The former inmate and famed victim of Munchausen by proxy opens up to PEOPLE in this week's issue about rekindling with former fiancé Ken Urker amid what she described as a "heartbreaking" divorce from Ryan Anderson — and how it will all play out on her new Lifetime docuseries Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup, premiering June 3.

While serving time in prison for her role in the killing of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, Blanchard was in a relationship with Urker, who first started as a pen pal. He proposed in 2018 and their on-and-off relationship ended years prior to her 2023 prison release. But now they've found a way back to one another.

"Love looks like spending time and feeling your complete self with another person," says Blanchard. "It's so cliché but it gives you wings."

That's how she feels now with Urker after her marriage to Anderson, whom she wed behind bars in 2022, imploded back in March. A friend of Gypsy-Rose’s previously revealed to PEOPLE that the split happened after a bad argument and that Gypsy-Rose thought her husband was “controlling.” Anderson denies such behavior.

As for Urker, he was first spotted with Blanchard again in late April. "Ken and I reconnected as friends. It wasn't like, jump out of a marriage and then let me meet up with you, and boom, we're in a relationship," she says. "We had kept a friendship for the longest time. He was in a relationship. I was with Ryan, and so we were living different lives with respect to our partners, a 'wish you the best' type of thing."

Their friendship, following their previous failed engagement, had long been a concern of Anderson's, who said as much in the previous Lifetime docuseries The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard. And in a newly released trailer for the upcoming docuseries, the couple is shown to fight over Ken's continued presence in her life.

When her relationship with Ryan fell apart, Blanchard says Urker is who she turned to. "It wasn't until I knew that my marriage was over that I was like, 'I would like to see you and let's hang out because we never got to hang out before when I was in prison'," she says.

Amid her breakup, "Ken was that support for me when going through this emotional hardship of crying and then being okay and then crying," she says. "Then I let myself open up to the feelings that I've always had for Ken. Those feelings just don't die."

She adds, "I would say that Ken is my first love because that's when I honestly felt like a mature love. It wasn't based off of a fantasy. It was actually based on a connection that two people have for each other."

She's eager for fans to see their relationship blossom on the new docuseries, and reveals Urker will be featured.

"I'm really grateful to him for being so open to being interviewed," she says of Urker agreeing to take part in the docuseries during their recent trip to New Orleans. "I was like, 'I want you to be a part of my life, but it's up to you if you're comfortable being on camera.' And he's like, 'I'll do it for you.'"

Though she admits to having both supporters and "people who want to see me fail," she's hoping all will understand her life more after watching.

"I think people are going to understand aspects of my side, they're going to understand aspects of Ryan's side, and I think that they will come out of it saying, 'Okay, I understand that sometimes it just happens this way. That's life'."