Hi Canadian777,
I don't have any special circumstances.
My relationship lasts more than 5 years now, but me and my partner started living together in the UK about 3 years ago.
I didn't provide too much of evidence:
1) just letters and bills to the all 3 adresses where we lived together (our first adress was more than 2 years ago and it was not covered in the application) - so, in total it was more letters than required; but I decided that more is better than less
2) pictures of us together with dates and places (which was a hard task as we both don't like photos)
and that's it.
Also I had a long list of my journeys where everything but trips to Russia was together with my partner.
But maybe you're right and my Tier2 helped because having Tier2 visa means that I have a job here, so I pay taxes and do not use any benefits.
I kept an eye to
eea-route-applications/pr-processing-ti ... 40229.html thread and there are many people who got their RCs quite fast. I know that it's a bit different, but it has the same time standards as EEA(EFM) applications - up to 6 months.
So, I hope that the Home Office is not that overloaded as it used to be and soon you will get the good news from them as well