Auntie SparkNotes: Which Girl Should I Choose?

Hey Auntie SparkNotes,

Ok so I’m a 16 year-old guy and right now, I have a girlfriend. An amazing one at that. Literally everything about her is perfect except for two things 1, she lives on the other side of the States. 2, if for whatever reason one day I left her, it would destroy her, because without going into details, my support is basically the only thing keeping us together. I love her. I really do, buuuuuut … I think it goes without saying that I’d rather have a local relationship. Someone I can actually be with.

And I have a few options. Let’s call them M, K, and J. Last year I dated M for a little while but we fell apart. She still likes me so I know I could get with her no trouble at all, but I mean, I don’t have much feelings for her. She’s just the easy option, which isn’t always the best. K is a girl that I had a crush on last year and she had a crush on me apparently, but by the time I worked up the balls to ask her out, she had already lost her feelings for me. Now we’re really good friends and I’m basically her relationship adviser. (Right now she’s in a relationship that from where everyone other than them, it looks very unhealthy and bad.) Finally there’s J, who two years ago we both had a crush on each other but I was a dumbass and didn’t do anything about it and missed my chance. Since then we haven’t talked much, but we are in class together this year and we talk about little bit. Thing is she has a girlfriend, but I know she liked to bounce around a lot so it’s not too outlandish to think that I could win her over.

Ok, so basically this is my problem. I love my girlfriend and she’s amazing, but it’s really really hard being so far away from her and I have a few options closer to home. But if I leave her I’m afraid of what might happen to her. What I wanna know is this: Should I tough it out with her now and make it to college where we will be together for good, or should I let go and find someone closer to home? If so, who would be the best option?

Let me make sure I’ve got this straight, Sparkler. Your options are:

a) A girl you have next to no feelings for who you’ve already unsuccessfully dated once;
b) a girl who’s not only not single, but who has put you so far in the friendzone that you might as well change your name to Dr. Phil;
c) a girl you’ve barely spoken with in two years who is currently dating another woman; or
d) your girlfriend, who you love, except that you’d willingly break up with her to date literally anyone within a one-mile radius of your current location.

… Somehow, darling, I just can’t decide which of these various options would be the best—not because they’re all equally awesome, but because they are all so very, very bad. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, the bare minimum requirements for any girl you date is that she be interested in you, interesting to you, and available in general. Meanwhile, the best of all possible ladies on your list are only checking boxes two-outta-three.

In short, kiddo, I think you can do better… and perhaps more importantly, so can the ladies in question, who I’m guessing have greater aspirations than to be the best of four crappy options in your human comparison-shopping experiment. How do you think Girl A would feel if she knew you’d considered dating her, not out of genuine interest, but because she seemed like the easiest available option? How do you think your current girlfriend would feel if she knew you were staying with her out of equal parts pity and doubt about your prospects of dating locally? How quickly could you leave the country if all four of them somehow compared notes and recognized you as the writer of this letter? …Haha! Just kidding! Sort of. Maybe you should renew your passport, just to be safe.

And when it comes to how you handle your love life for the foreseeable future, I’m going to go ahead and suggest that your best dating option is… nobody. Seriously. It’s not just that all your prospects are uninteresting, uninterested, or taken; your letter also makes it abundantly clear that your current relationship needs to end (pro tip: “She would be destroyed if I left” is a good argument for an ethical breakup, not a reason to stay.) Your current girlfriend deserves better than a guy who’s only with her out of a sense of obligation, and you need to be mature and responsible enough to understand that and act on it—not because you’ve lined up a more desirable alternative, but because it’s the right thing to do.

And if, after that, another girl emerges as a viable, desirable potential girlfriend? Then that’s fine, and you can go ahead and pursue her. But it also wouldn’t actually be the end of the world if you were to just remain single for awhile—if only so that you begin to recognize being alone as a viable option, at least until you find someone you actually like.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
Want more info about how this column works? Check out the Auntie SparkNotes FAQ.