Spending a week on an island with the person you are dating sounds like a fantasy.
But the setting for a new A&E extreme reality series is no tropical oasis. In this show, couples who have been dating online — and have never met before in person — live for one week in a house on deserted Belden Island, off the coast of Connecticut.
There’s no privacy, no access to the outside world and no escape.
Welcome to the “Love Prison.”
Billy Serviss, 42, and Jeanne Siegel, 39, met on the website Plenty of Fish, and had been dating for six months while living 3,000 miles apart — he in Sayville, LI, and she in San Clemente, Calif.
But on Monday night’s premiere, which airs at 10 p.m., the online couple puts their relationship to the test.
After they arrive on the island, they’re told they will be staying inside for 23 hours a day in a house with only one bedroom.
“You didn’t have anywhere to go and take a timeout,” Siegel tells The Post. “That wore on me.”
Prisoners are also forced to give up all access to technology for the week — there’s no TV, no cellphones and no music — and to express their emotions face-to-face rather than through emoticons.
“When you’re shacked up alone with no technology on an island, it’s extreme, it sends a relationship fast-forward in record time,” says Julie Spira, an online-dating expert and author of “The Perils of Cyber-Dating.”
“Going from a technology-based relationship to no technology whatsoever can be a dramatic shock for [those] reliant on communicating with emails and good-morning texts, and that warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you’re courting online.”
There are other annoyances of living together to contend with — opposite sleep schedules and learning how long your partner takes to get ready for dinner, among them.
Worst of all? There are surprise screenings of pre-taped videos in which partners reveal secrets — Serviss, for one, is dating other women.
And with nowhere to run after a fight, the “Love Prison” forces couples to confront their issues rather than avoid them.
“You had to deal with the situation,” Serviss says. “Under normal circumstances, if it was somebody I was in a relationship with, I probably wouldn’t answer the phone.”
Still, the two bonded over being parents (Serviss has a 16-year-old son, while Siegel is divorced with two kids, ages 11 and 8). They also found themselves opening up more since they didn’t have to juggle a three-hour time difference — and had 24 hours a day to kill.
“I learned stuff about Jeanne that we didn’t talk about on the phone or through text that came out on the island, [like] about her brother passing away,” Serviss says.
At the end of the week, each couple has the option of leaving the island together or going their separate ways.
Tiffany-Nicole Bennett, a 28-year-old model and actress who lives in Manhattan and LA, had previously been in a long-distance online relationship. But when she flew out to meet the guy after three months, she discovered there was no in-person chemistry.
So when she met 27-year-old Kenneth Dinkins, who lives in Columbus, Ohio, on OK Cupid, she took longer getting to know him, and peppered him with questions she hadn’t thought to ask before — including his interests and goals — before agreeing to meet on “Love Prison” after nine months of digital dating.
“He offered something that wasn’t too typical,” she says. “Most guys are like, ‘Oh, I’m looking for a beautiful girl.’ He was more, ‘This is what I can do. This is what I can offer.’ ”
According to Spira, long-distance online relationships are quite common across all age ranges. A 2010 University of Iowa study found that spouses who met online averaged 18 ½ months of dating before getting married, compared to 42 months for couples who met offline. “Statistically, couples who meet online and start dating online, their relationship accelerates much faster,” she says. “It just pushes things forward because you’re learning so much more about each other with these back-and-forth questions.”
The “Love Prison” forces intimacy even more — and that’s enough to make anyone feel trapped, no matter the outcome.
“It’s called ‘Love Prison,’ and that’s exactly what it was,” Bennett tells The Post. “You always think that you know someone really well, [but] you never really know them until you’ve lived with them.”
A look at the ‘Love Prison’
The kitchen
The kitchen was stocked with groceries, while a full bar offered ample opportunity for boozing.
The house
The 1,465-square-foot cottage has seven rooms — but only one bedroom. Couples were allowed to leave the house just one hour a day. Card games and checkers provided the only entertainment.
The island
Belden Island, which is private, is part of a small archipelago off the coast of Branford, Conn. For the show, 40 surveillance cameras were installed on the property.