Recently, on another site, I received a message from a guy 18 years old from Morocco. He wrote that he has left school, that on several occasions he tried to enter Europe illegally by boat, but each time he was deported. He said that the age does not matter to him that he does not need the money, he wants marriage to live in Russia. I did not respond to this guy.
Now, about your friend. First he meets 2 times with the woman and had as you said "intense feeling and intimacy". And now he has matured to think seriously about the relationship with a young woman. The question arises: so long as he entertained with a young woman he did not want to think about anything? What was occupied his brain?