Evidence of Ongoing Relationship Ideas

[Isabel&Will 112]

It's going to be quite a while before I need to have evidence of an ongoing relationship for my K1 interview, so I thought I would ask now while I still have ample time to gather it. My fiance and I are both gamer nerds so we spend pretty much the entirety of our off-time in a Skype call together either playing games together, playing our own games, or watching anime/other shows together. This time together has recently decreased due to his work schedule changing, me getting a new full-time job, and our time difference, so recent Skype logs may not reflect the "historical average" of our time together, unfortunately. My fiance is in the US military, and while he does get some leave time, he has been planning a trip to go see his family, and then to save up leave so that he can accompany me when it's time for me to come to the US to marry him. However, because of this, and for the fact that we want to save as much money as we can for our new life together, I'm not entirely sure if either of us will be able to plan a trip to visit the other (I also don't know when I'll have vacation time at my new job and don't really want to take any chances at the border).

I did see the list of suggested examples on the K1 Guide, but I don't really think most of the evidence would apply to us in this case ("Include photos, travel documents, emails, online chat logs"; "copies of land line and cell phone bills, appropriate emails and letters you have sent including stamps on envelopes"). We do sometimes chat on Facebook but we mostly use it to send each other funny/cute videos while we're chatting on Skype without much context. However, I recall reading that Skype would be considered a very weak form of evidence (especially now that we no longer really have 48+ hour calls anymore). If anyone who's been in a similar situation (especially recently, as many of the resources I've seen are a bit on the dated side) could let me know what worked for them, I would be very grateful!
 

Edited October 15, 2018 by Isabel&Will

[Jenna Ting 27]

1 hour ago, Isabel&Will said:

It's going to be quite a while before I need to have evidence of an ongoing relationship for my K1 interview, so I thought I would ask now while I still have ample time to gather it. My fiance and I are both gamer nerds so we spend pretty much the entirety of our off-time in a Skype call together either playing games together, playing our own games, or watching anime/other shows together. This time together has recently decreased due to his work schedule changing, me getting a new full-time job, and our time difference, so recent Skype logs may not reflect the "historical average" of our time together, unfortunately. My fiance is in the US military, and while he does get some leave time, he has been planning a trip to go see his family, and then to save up leave so that he can accompany me when it's time for me to come to the US to marry him. However, because of this, and for the fact that we want to save as much money as we can for our new life together, I'm not entirely sure if either of us will be able to plan a trip to visit the other (I also don't know when I'll have vacation time at my new job and don't really want to take any chances at the border).

I did see the list of suggested examples on the K1 Guide, but I don't really think most of the evidence would apply to us in this case ("Include photos, travel documents, emails, online chat logs"; "copies of land line and cell phone bills, appropriate emails and letters you have sent including stamps on envelopes"). We do sometimes chat on Facebook but we mostly use it to send each other funny/cute videos while we're chatting on Skype without much context. However, I recall reading that Skype would be considered a very weak form of evidence (especially now that we no longer really have 48+ hour calls anymore). If anyone who's been in a similar situation (especially recently, as many of the resources I've seen are a bit on the dated side) could let me know what worked for them, I would be very grateful!
 

 

[Jenna Ting 27]

Better to get text messages showing you both do have a bona fide.Each month  included two chat logs won't be hard,4 chat logs on an A4 paper. You both can take pics sending to each other on Skype to share your daily life or make  screenshots of you both on video chat. Even it's video chat ,it'll show you keep in touch often. Or write letters to each other

[Isabel&Will 112]

4 hours ago, Jenna Ting said:

Better to get text messages showing you both do have a bona fide.Each month  included two chat logs won't be hard,4 chat logs on an A4 paper. You both can take pics sending to each other on Skype to share your daily life or make  screenshots of you both on video chat. Even it's video chat ,it'll show you keep in touch often. Or write letters to each other

Thanks, I do plan to include chat logs, but I guess the problem is we would need to type instead of saying things to each other's faces over Skype so that we have written evidence, but it's kind of unnatural to do that when we can just say it out loud. My fiance's not really great with words and doesn't like typing if he can help it, so I'm hoping to try and find some additional things we can use to strengthen our evidence

[Jenna Ting 27]

23 minutes ago, Isabel&Will said:

Thanks, I do plan to include chat logs, but I guess the problem is we would need to type instead of saying things to each other's faces over Skype so that we have written evidence, but it's kind of unnatural to do that when we can just say it out loud. My fiance's not really great with words and doesn't like typing if he can help it, so I'm hoping to try and find some additional things we can use to strengthen our evidence

My fiance likes to video  call too. He isn't used to type words. So he uses voice recognition to send messages. 

[Ayna and Chris 3]

skype screenshots might be a good idea with the date visible

[Chocobo 196]

12 hours ago, Isabel&Will said:

 I'm not entirely sure if either of us will be able to plan a trip to visit the other (I also don't know when I'll have vacation time at my new job and don't really want to take any chances at the border).

 

You should be fine at the border.  With the VWP, it's very unlikely you'd have an issue.    

 

What about handwritten/post marked letters or cards?  Small gifts?  (ThinkGeek always has awesome stuff.  LOL)  

 

If you guys game together, any chat logs on PSN or Xbox you can use?  There's a date/time stamp on those.  

[Isabel&Will 112]

3 hours ago, Chocobo said:

You should be fine at the border.  With the VWP, it's very unlikely you'd have an issue.    

 

What about handwritten/post marked letters or cards?  Small gifts?  (ThinkGeek always has awesome stuff.  LOL)  

 

If you guys game together, any chat logs on PSN or Xbox you can use?  There's a date/time stamp on those.  

Yeah, unfortunately the visiting difficulties are more to do with me not having vacation time at present, and the cost of travel, though I am a bit paranoid that they'll give me some trouble that will affect my chances of getting the K1 😩

We're thinking we might send each other Christmas cards this year, we don't write to each other (I have one letter from when he was in Basic Training but that was over 2 years ago now) because we feel like it's a bit redundant when we talk to each other every day. We have sent each other some digital games and I sent him a box of ketchup chips (lol) through Amazon, so I might be able to use those.

We play PC games while in a voice chat so we don't really have any chat logs from our games. I was thinking of maybe providing a side by side comparison of our in-game hours as secondary evidence, and/or including some group conversations that involve his best friend who he has known since childhood might help but I'm not sure...

[Lucky2Lucky 2,526]

In reading this it’s not very clear if you have actually met in person...have you? 

[Isabel&Will 112]

36 minutes ago, Luckycuds said:

In reading this it’s not very clear if you have actually met in person...have you? 

Yes, sorry I didn't really explain the context very much: we have met several times, however, this was before filing, and I have been under the impression that the proof of ongoing relationship at the interview stage would mainly focus on the time between filing and the interview. Our most recent time together was when he came to visit this past Christmas, right after we had confirmed that our previous petition had been lost somewhere in the system and did not get filed. We thought we would be restarting the process right after his visit but then we got delayed for other reasons, so this whole time we've been in the mindset of "well, we'll be getting together to marry soon so let's hold off on visiting again so we can save up for the wedding", and now we have factors restricting our ability to travel.

I will still be including pre-filing photos and the like but I'm mainly worried about the after-filing stuff. I met his grandparents about a week after we started officially dating, and his dad at his Basic Training graduation a year into our relationship so we weren't at the "let's make sure we take photos together" stage, so I don't really have any proof of meeting them.

[debbiedoo 2,339]

my fiance and i never have conversations over text or any electronic form. we live on the phone. but then, we also see each other every couple of weeks.

 

proving a bonafide relationship is not hard even if you dont get to see each other often. many have filed successfully on having only met ONCE (which blows my mind but it another topic altogether)

 

another in person visit is more important than a fancy wedding. you can do a wedding cheap. or just get married and THEN save for a bigger wedding.

[Isabel&Will 112]

59 minutes ago, debbiedoo said:

my fiance and i never have conversations over text or any electronic form. we live on the phone. but then, we also see each other every couple of weeks.

 

proving a bonafide relationship is not hard even if you dont get to see each other often. many have filed successfully on having only met ONCE (which blows my mind but it another topic altogether)

 

another in person visit is more important than a fancy wedding. you can do a wedding cheap. or just get married and THEN save for a bigger wedding.

3

Yeah, I suppose things are really on a case by case basis. As for the wedding, we're already planning on just doing a courthouse marriage in the state he's currently stationed at, then doing a small backyard type wedding (< 30 people) in his home state at a later date once we've sorted everything out. 

The main factors that are making it hard to do a visit would be, for him, building up enough leave to be able to visit his family (who he hasn't seen in almost 2 years), help me move across the continent and then get married and settle everything with that, then be able to go to his home state to have our wedding, with what would ideally be another chunk of leave left in there for us both to go to his home state to scope out a venue before the wedding.

For me, the main issue would be that my job is currently in a busy season so I can't take time off until March which is the approximate time we're looking at for our I-129F to be adjudicated. I also don't have any vacation days yet so I wouldn't really be able to go even if that wasn't the case (and I would still need time available for the interview trip, since I need to travel from Vancouver to Montreal). The financial aspect is something we could stomach because it's worth the money to be able to see each other, but things get costly with plane tickets, hotel fees, and not being able to cook for ourselves (he is still living in the dorms for the next little while so I can't lodge with him at the moment), so it still hurts.