Waiting for something you really want is quite possibly one of the hardest and most frustrating things ever. My husband lives in another country and we are currently waiting on the spouse visa for him to be able to move to the USA with me. Unfortunately, the current wait time is anywhere between 12 months (if you are lucky) to two years (plus). We are only almost three months into the wait, which is a challenge.
At this point, I do not know exactly when we will see each other again. My last trip to see him was at the end of October 2024 and I filed for his visa right after I got home. We are trying to stay positive and believe we will be one of the lucky ones for who the process will go as quickly as possible. If that is the case, the next time we will be together in person will be when he arrives here to stay permanently.
However, being realistic, I spoke with him and mentioned that if we get to June or July and we still have not had any movement on the visa I want to make a plan and to get a (refundable) plane ticket to visit him in his country in September or October 2025. If we get movement on the visa before that trip I would cancel my ticket and keep waiting for him to get the visa to come here. But, if we don’t have any progress, I want to have a date set when we will be together again.
Even having that tentative plan is helpful for me with waiting. That means, worst-case scenario, the longest I have to wait to see him in person is September or October 2025. Having a timeline makes the waiting slightly easier, instead of the next meeting being a complete unknown.
We do what we can while we are playing the waiting game. Honestly, we could do more but so far what we have been doing is working. Our best form of communication is texting which we do throughout the day. We always say good morning and goodnight and talk about what is going on throughout our days.
Next, we video chat as much as possible. We try for every other day, but recently it has been about two or three times a week. I have heard of other people who video chat for hours each day but that does not work for us. I would like to see him every day for at least a little bit but his job does not allow for that so we do as much as we can. The important thing is we continue communicating somehow, be it texting or video chat.
What I also think is really important is for both of us to keep busy in our own lives. The fact is we live in different countries at the moment so we do have separate lives. To make waiting go as fast as possible we need to stay at least somewhat busy and active in our own lives. We both will go out to dinner with our friends, visit with family, do activities with friends, I volunteer once in awhile, he takes little trips to other cities.
Another thing I think is really important is we share with each other when we are having a bad day. I shared with him how I was really missing him one day recently and how that day was extra hard. He tells me when he misses me too. I feel that being able to stay open with each other about how we are feeling is important, not only for the waiting process but for our future. Being able to be open and share while we are separated will hopefully translate into doing the same when we are together.
Finally, we keep reminding each other that this is temporary. We need to stay patient and know that in the end we will be together and plan to stay together the rest of our lives. This point in time having to wait really sucks, but we know we want to be with each other and have to go through this to get to that point. In the end it will be worth it and we will look back at think “wow, we got through that.” I really look forward to that day, but in the meantime, we need to be patient and wait and see.
