(You might want to pour yourself a pint before you read all this...)

So, I met this girl in Italy. Well, I didn't just "meet" her; it was pretty methodically planned out. I'm from the U.S., and I initiated contact with an Italian girl through Couchsurfing. She's 25, I'm 32. We arranged a time to meet for "sightseeing" during my trip to Italy (for relevant background, see here ). In our texts and emails, she was friendly and seemed eager to meet, but she wasn't overtly flirtatious, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. We had initially planned to meet during the afternoon for coffee. That morning, however, she texted me and asked if we could meet at 7pm instead. "Great," I thought... much better chance of taking a romantic turn, escalating kino, etc. A little before 7:00, she sent me another text to tell me that she was running a little bit late. "No big deal," I thought. Then she sends another text: "My friend E____ is coming with me." Well, shit. Here comes the friendzone. This totally changed my frame of mind, and I told myself, "Okay, just have fun this evening, move along, and find someone new tomorrow." You win some, you lose some. Right?

So, she shows up with her friend. This girl is even hotter than she looked in her photos. Damn. I try to be warm and friendly, and I give them both casual hugs as we say hello. They seem a little thrown off by this. Things start off a little rocky, I think partly because they're both a little self-conscious about their English (which was actually pretty good). Once we had been talking for a while and got something to drink, they both loosened up. We were having good conversation, and I was able to joke around with them and make them laugh. I had to keep reminding myself, though, "This is going nowhere. Friendzone." But then, around 10:00, her friend says, "well, I need to head back home. I'll let you two hang out for a while." Whoa. So, maybe the friend was just a safeguard to make sure I wasn't a creep, and now she felt comfortable being alone around me. I thought this might be a game-changer.

The two of us walk around for a while, and conversation is coming along naturally. Still, I was not getting any IOI at all. She's doing nothing that could be interpreted as flirting, and she's not even keeping a very close distance to me. Not sure what to make of this. Before I can even think about what my next move should be, she announces after a mere 15 minutes that she needs to take the next bus home, because it's the last one that runs that night. I thought to myself, "Okay, either I really fucked this one up, or she's just not into me at all." Either way, I thought it was a dead end. But then, before we say goodbye, she asks if I want to meet again in a couple of days. Keep in mind, she doesn't even live in this city anymore... she's only in town for a week to see friends. Yet she wants (or at least offers?) to see me again. I am so confused.

Two days later (my last day in Italy, btw), she texts and asks if I want to meet up with her and her friends and walk along the river. I take the "with friends" part as a bad sign, but I figure that I can at least look for an opportunity to break away from the group if I'm getting a good vibe from her. At the time, she was with the same friend from the other day. I said, "Why don't you two come over to my apartment. I'll make drinks for us, and then we can meet up with your friends." Okay, good idea, she says.

When they come over, I get a totally new vibe from her. She acts like we've known each other for a long time. I make cocktails, and we sit in the living room. We're having a good time, laughing it up, etc. When we leave, she stays close to me as we walk. While we're walking and talking, our arms are constantly brushing up against each other's. Her friend hangs back just a bit. "Okay, this is good," I'm thinking. As we walk together, we have some fairly deep / personal conversation. She clearly feels comfortable around me. I flirt with her. I compliment her. I tease her. She's eating it up. I basically begin to work my way up the kino escalation ladder, and she responds positively the whole time. Eventually, we meet up with her sister, who is part of this "friend" group we are meeting up with. [KEY DETAIL: this is her older sister, with whom she is staying while she's in town.] Her friend and her sister walk slightly ahead of us, and we hang back. We hold hands when they're not looking. I touch her back, caress her hair, neck, etc. She reciprocates. We can't keep our hands off each other. We're like two horny teenagers trying to be sneaky.

Immediately I construct a plan to get the two of us alone. We're still within walking distance from my apartment. While the four of us our standing around, waiting for the other people to show up, I pull her aside. I say, "Hey, do you like champagne?" She looks right into my eyes: "Yes... why?" "Well, because I have a bottle of champagne back at my apartment, and it's going to go to waste since I can't take it with me on the plane tomorrow [true fact]. Do you want to go back to my apartment and help me drink it?" "Just you and me?" "Yes." She paused, and then she nodded her head and gave me a look that said, "I know exactly what you mean." I might as well have said to her, "Do you want me to take you back to my apartment and fuck your brains out?" I told her I would pay for a taxi (even though it was a 45-minute drive!!!) for her to get home. She said, "I don't want to take advantage." I laughed and told her I didn't mind at all. She smiled and said, "Okay."

But then she hesitated and said, "There is only one problem." "What?" I asked. She cringed as she tried to explain to me that she would need to get the "approval" of her friend and her sister. Um... okay? "You mean, like, you need their permission?" "No, it's not like that. It's hard to explain. It's also because I'm staying at my sister's house. Just a second..." She turns to them and begins speaking in Italian. I don't understand a word of Italian, but it's clear what's going on. The sister does not approve (she likes me just fine, she just doesn't like this plan I'm proposing). Things start getting heated between them. Her friend is cool with it, but the sister isn't budging. The two of them argue for a while. She turns to me and starts crying. I hold her while she explains to me that her sister says it "looks bad" to come home in the middle of the night in a taxi by yourself. We discuss it for a minute, but it's clear that there's no way around it. I'm pissed, to put it mildly.

We walk along with the group for a few minutes, and then out of nowhere, we're all saying goodbye. I wasn't prepared for this --- I think I was still in shock, and/or too focused on coming up with a backup plan. We're all standing there in a group, so I have to say goodbye to her like she's just some chum like anybody else. It's torture. After saying goodbye, we text for the next hour or two. I tell her how mad I am at myself for not kissing her. We didn't really get to be alone, but if I had known that our time was going to be cut short, I would have found a way. She tells me she will reserve a kiss for "next time". Our texting escalates from there and gets pretty passionate.

This was over a week ago. We've both been traveling since then, but we've kept in touch. I'm going to be in Europe again in about a month, and we're trying to figure out a way to meet somewhere and spend a few days together. WTF. I want this girl so bad, and I know it's fueled by the fact that she was pulled away from me at the last second. I can't believe I got freaking cock-blocked by her sister. Lesson learned: Don't underestimate the differences between Italian and American culture. I'm not blaming everything on that... but I know it was a significant part of the problem. What started as a hopeful Couchsurfing bang turned into an intercontinental Romeo-and-Juliet-style tragedy.