Did your relationship involve any period of long-distance contact before you lived in the same place?

“Did your relationship involve any period of long-distance contact before you lived in the same place?” is a practice question about how you met for a marriage-based green card interview at a USCIS field office. A real officer may ask it in other words, ask something else, or skip it. Practice can help you explain your own facts. It cannot tell you what USCIS will decide.

What is the officer checking with this question?

The officer may be looking at how your relationship continued while you lived apart. Questions about contact and visits can connect the early relationship to later moves or marriage. The answer may also clarify whether living in the same place means the same city or a shared home, since those changes can happen at different times.

What might the officer ask next?

• How did you usually communicate while you were apart?
• When did you next spend time together in person?
• Who traveled for those visits?
• When did you begin living near each other?

The next question usually comes from the words in your answer. If you name a person, a place, or a month, expect a question about it. The guide to green card interview follow-up questions explains how to practice past the first answer.

How do you prepare to answer it?

Map the periods when you lived in different cities or countries and the visits between them. Recall the ways you kept in touch and the usual pattern, without claiming that every day followed the same schedule. Distinguish moving to the same city from moving into the same home. If the timing of a visit is unclear, review a related travel record if available and say when you still do not remember.

Answer from your own memory, in your own words. Do not learn a script or a sample answer. If your spouse remembers a detail differently, first check whether you mean the same event. Ask your lawyer about any concern with your forms or documents.

Can you practice this question out loud for free?

Yes. Choose "Answer it now, free". The officer asks this question first. You answer out loud, and the officer follows up on what you said. You can try 3 questions free, and you do not need documents. Feedback comes after the session, not while you speak.

More how you met questions

• How did you and your spouse first meet?
• When did you first meet your spouse, and where exactly were you?
• Who introduced you, or did you meet on your own?
• What was your first date, and what did you do together?
• How long after you met did you start dating seriously?
• What city and state or country was your spouse living in when you first met?
• What was your first impression of your spouse?

Read the how you met topic guide, or see all 91 interview questions.