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Honored Contributor
Posts: 54,410
Registered: ‎03-29-2012

Do you believe in vacation romances? A Tale of Two Countries...

A friend of mine embarked on a month-long European "curricu-cation". For the purposes of discussion, I'll refer to her as Stacia. For her job, she decided to take a three week long graduate course, but flew in a week early to do some traveling. She toured Country #1, where she met a younger man I'll call Demitri, who is from Country #1. They hung out for a few days before she had to leave and start her classes in Country #2. Stacia and Demitri kept in touch and saw each other at least one of the weekends, where they met up halfway between the two countries.

During her final week of classes, she attended a cultural event in the streets of Country #2. There she met a man (from Country #2) who was quite charming and handed her a rose. I'll call him Giovanni. He asked if they could be Facebook friends. Stacia added him to her Facebook friends, and she thought nothing more of it. On her last evening in Europe, she again met up with Demitri, who professed his love for her.

When Stacia returned to the U.S., she had Facebook messages from Giovanni saying that he had fallen in love with her the night they met in the streets. {#emotions_dlg.tt1}

Demitri is some type of engineer, but is currently unemployed. {#emotions_dlg.thumbdown} He is quite fond of travel and is planning on doing migrant farm work throughout Europe until he can save up for a ticket to visit Stacia in the U.S. He would like to visit her in October. Within a week of returning home, he told her that he wanted to marry her.

Now, I am more of a realist, so I have serious doubts about both of these men and their intentions towards Stacia. Stacia is a beautiful woman with a good job, she is spirited, and a true romantic. Frequently she uses online dating sites, but in the four years I've known her I've yet to meet any of the men she dates. Usually they fizzle out after two months. The foreign men seem to select her more often than American men. Her last "boyfriend" was also European. Although he is in his thirties, he lives at home and does not own a phone, so their communication was limited to e-mails and face to face interactions.

Does anyone have experience with this type of vacation romance(s)? I feel like she's in an episode of The Bachelor and is caught up in the romanticism of being in Europe and meeting not one but two "soul mates".{#emotions_dlg.unsure}