My saddest date, which will never fall into oblivion, was as a young man with a pretty friend of a cousin I knew since childhood, I was 21 ans she was 18.
She stayed for a while one summer at a vacation house my grandparents (long since dead) had then on the seaside with all my extended family and friends , a big household, and she agreed to date me back home when semester starts.
At first I made a big mistake, we went to the movies see "Night Watchman" from Liliana Cavani (the story of a former concentration camp inmate who after the war, in Vienna, falls in love with the SS who had tortured her-heavy stuff, unsavory, morally questionable), and then "The Omen", sort of horror movie...she was utterly shocked, all the more because (I didn't know it before) she was a devout Roman Catholic and wasn't used to this kind of hard stuff.
But she accepted to still date me, so I thought maybe I could still make up for my mistake.
Then I joined the military and didn't see her for a while, but we exchanged letters. During my duties I went to see her briefly at her student flat and our meeting was incredibly intense, she hugged me and we both weeped in each other's arms when I had to leave. I thought then she was more than just a friend, I was overwhelmed (*my sheets remember it* lol).
After I finished my duties (it was a short stint of several months) she invited me to her family home in the country to meet her (big) family-lots and brothers and sists, strictly Roman Catholic family.
I thought then things were becoming better and better. I even went to her to a monastery to hear the monk's mass, I was so enthralled I would have followed her anywhere, to Paradise or to Hell....
When it was time to go to bed, something very WEIRD
happened : with a friend of her (female), we went to sleep(the 3 of us!) in a room with a fireplace, on mattresses directly on the ground! and while the fire was raging in the fireplace she started undressing and putting slowly her nightgown while her friend was "sleeping" in the midddle...it was eerie....
but with her friend right between us, I ddn't dare make a move...I was flabbergasted, I didn't know how to behave...the next day after I left her to go back home, she told me how much she "admired me" -so what was it, love or friendship?
a few weeks later, she went for a year to India as an au pair in a wealthy family. I wrote her and I decided to ascertain things, so I provoked a reaction in sending her a ring and professing undying love
...she sent me the ring back per next mail and told me I was only a friend and would only stay a friend...I was desperate
and depressed for about two years....