First let me tell you that we had some red flags: big age difference (27 years), my 3 divorces (last one being July, 2006 but had been married 22.5 years and he is the one who left unexpectedly) , relationship since Nov., 2006. We have no children, so that was not an issue. I had visited him for 3 weeks in March, then 4 weeks in June, with plans for 3 more weeks in Sept. I also realize that not many people can go that much, but I am a teacher at a year round school with that schedule. However, the cost has been hard to cover. Now we are gonna have to work to pay off my skyhigh VISA card. Anyway, as to why we got ours and others didn't, I have no idea. My SO was not nervous going into the interview as he expected to get turned down. The thing I would change would be I would have made a much longer letter addressing all of those issues on our initial application. Sometimes I wonder if they don't care if the poor guys leave. My SO did not make much, etc. I also included the form about my income, can't remember what it is called. I kept sending him things to add to his booklet, but they never looked at them.
Here are some of the things I did: As soon as we applied for the K-1, I contacted my two senators and my congressman, signed releases and sent them a lengthy letter explaining our relationship and Casa's reputation. So they knew what was going on from the beginning. I was soooo very lucky to hear back from all of them with supportive statements. So I called/wrote all of them before his interview and all three wrote emails to Casa saying they were taking an interest in this case and to let them know the outcome. I wrote a detailed 3 page letter addressing all of our red flags and telling them how we would work these out. I included details of all of my trips and stated that I had tickets for the next trip already. I was going to send this with my SO, but my congressman's secretary ended up sending it with her email right before his interview. This might have helped, but who knows? I sent him additional pics and such to add to his packet. Right before his interview, I printed page 1 of all of our Yahoo IM's. She did look at a few of those, but not at the pics.
Anyway, here are the questions as I remember them:
1. What is her full name?
2. Where does she live?
3. Where else has she lived?
4. What does she do for a job?
5. Where did you meet her? She wanted to know the name of the site.
6. Why did you go to that site? (His friends told him about it,)
7. Did you talk to other women? (A few, but not after I met her.)
8. Why did you choose her? He took this opportunity to talk about the stuff we had in common, such as hobbies.
9. Do you talk on the phone?
10. When did you meet?
YOU WILL LOVE THIS ONE:
11. When is your mother's birthday? He told her he wasn't sure, but that he could call his mother and ask her. She said no. But then she asked him if he knew that she was the same age as me (lol). He said yes. She asked him what her mother thought of that, if she was surprised. He told her no, that she loved me, had no problem with that and that here are some pics of us together. But she didn't want to see them. He told her that his family had no problem with that and that they loved me.
12. Where will you get married? He said USA, but she asked "Church or mosque" he said her home.
13. What does your family and her family think of the relationship?
14. How many divorces? Why and when was she divorced the last time?
15. What is last husband's name?
At the end, she looked at a few of our chats. I had sent page one of all of our chats up to that time. But she didn't look at any pics. Anyway, he said she was very nice to him, which totally surprised me.
Hope this helps others. We are doing great, making plans, rushing around. I will keep in better touch in the future, promise.

