Kay and x0Kiss0fDeath:
Back in 1995, it was a bit easier with fiancée visas because they were handled at the British Consulate General and you got a decision within a few hours.
However, one crappy stipulation to get one was that you had to have physically met each other and show proof of a minimum of THREE years!
My fiancé, now my husband of 22 years, and I were pen-pals in 1986 and we wrote to each other every week for six years before we met. We spoke on the phone every week (when phone calls cost $1.50-2 a minute) but we didn't actually meet until early 1993. The second we met, we simply "knew" we wanted to be together.
I was a single-mother of a young boy so I couldn't leave my job or my apartment to stay with my boyfriend and he was living in RAF accommodation so it's not I could live with him anyways. In those many months, we only actually spent time together in short spurts and it totaled 40 days. You can only imagine the comments from everyone on each side saying we hardly knew each other to make a huge move. In fact, when I went to apply for a fiancée visa, I was four months short of three years. However, I had proof of nine years of phone calls, letters, and my pleading for my nearly four-year-old to start school allowed the consulate worker to let me go sooner. In this day and age, I would have had a refusal.
Sadly, none of my friends from that time understood that I knew best and I lost all those people who were like my family with the move to England. Even after 22 years, I miss them especially since I am now living back in the same US city where I left. I do see them from time to time due to mutual friends and it's still painful. But I gained a lot more than I lost.
So, my point in all these words Kay is that you just need to do what's right for you and don't let others get you down.
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