Hey guys,

I'm going to start off with a little about me first in order to get the best advice. I'm a 22-year old college student and I'm graduating tomorrow. I will be moving to San Francisco in June to create a tech startup with a couple of other guys. When I was younger, relationships didn't last longer than 6 weeks for me and I usually hooked up with girls without pursuing anything more until I met my current girlfriend a little more than 2 years ago. We've had a decent relationship since, we love each other and we care greatly about each other. Recently though (last 6 months), our relationship has been a little shaky, I've been spending a lot of time with my startup, I manage a pretty large organization on campus and I like to go out with my guy friends and stay out till the bars close (I always invite my girlfriend to come out though). We still spend a lot of time together even though she thinks we don't, she lives across the parking lot and we spend nearly every night together. One of the things she has an issue with is that I'm not an emotional person, I don't wear my emotions on my sleeve, I don't like to show my emotions; she kinda does, a lot. I get a lot of flack from her. She expects me to jump up in the air about certain things and cry about others; I don't but that's not because I don't care or anything, I just don't show my emotions and I have a somewhat different outlook on life than she does. My mentality is that "sh*t happens" and she is more of the type that analyzes situations more than I do and wants everything to be as perfect as possible. I am very well accepted by her family, I've been to her house a lot and she's been to mine. I do really love her family.

For quite some time however, there's been something missing, we had a lot more sex in the first year than the second, the chemistry is non-existent most of the time, we get in a lot more arguments (we get over them very quickly though). We have our own friends, we're both independent people; we got out with our own friends and we don't tend to try to control what the other does. We greatly care about each other and love each other; I feel like our relationship is this decent car without all the bells and whistles, it's just kind of there, it drives, it has good A/C but no leather seats or GPS, just a boring car.

To add to this situation, I'm leaving after I graduate, I'm going to San Francisco. She still has a year left. That adds a lot of uncertainty to this situation. She always wants to talk about what's going to happen when I leave, we talk about it, but she always wants answers, which I simply cannot provide. All I can tell her is that we're going to try to make things work, but what happens happens. I don't want to tell her "yeah, we'll be fine", I want her to be realistic and not create false hopes. She decided she wanted to take a break right after I graduate so we can both figure things out.

Recently (month or so), I've been feeling the serious need to talk to other girls, I don't have many female friends. I've been feeling the need to explore what's out there, not with the intention of hooking up or anything, I just want to talk to other girls because I haven't done that in a while. I don't know if that arose from me graduating or from the state of the relationship, or both. It's not like I go to a bar and talk to random girls and try to get their numbers, in fact, that never happens. I only talk to girls if for some reason she talks to me or one of my friends first at a bar and I usually don't ask for a number, that would be going too far for me.

At one of the bars I commonly frequent, I got friendly with a waitress; I thought she was cute, talked to her, tipped her well, and that was it. For me and my friends it was kinda like "let's go to the bar so you can check out your girlfriend", we'd go, have a couple of beers and go to the next bar, I'd talk to her a little and that was it. Increasingly though, I've been making my friends go to that bar so I could see the waitress and last wee, she was really friendly with me one night and my buddy kept on telling me "I think she really likes you man", somehow, we exchanged numbers, it went very quickly, and then I asked her if she'd go for coffee with me, to which she said yes. I found myself really hung up on her, I started liking her, a lot. When I woke up in the morning, the only thing I wanted to do was text her and ask her for coffee, which I did and we went for coffee the same day and we also took a walk together after coffee. Needless to say, I came out of that liking her even more. That same day, I went back to the bar where she works, she asked me to, and I had a few drinks with my friends I talked to her some more. At some point she came up to me when she wasn't so busy and me having a few drinks, told her that I really liked her, she looked at me and gave me a big hug. The bar was closing, she had to clean up but I asked her if she wanted to get breakfast when she was done with work. So an hour later, at around 5, we met and sat on a lawn and walked around until 7, we talked a lot but didn't do anything. The next day (yesterday), I felt extremely confused; I don't want to hurt my girlfriend, I still love her and care about her, I don't want to hurt the new girl and I was pretty much napping all day. Needing someone to talk to, I called up my roommate and best friend, who knows both girls. He told me to at least keep a lid on the new girl and not talk to her until after I graduate, and use my two weeks in Yellowstone to think about everything. At 4:30 this morning, I get a text from the new girl asking me if she could come pick me up to go for a walk, I was out of bed and ready in 5 minutes... So much for keeping the lid on for 3 days. So we drove around, parked the car and sat in it for about an hour and half, we listened to music and talked. At one point, it was silent, she looked at me and asked me if she could kiss me... I changed the subject very quickly and we didn't kiss. Believe me, the only thing I wanted to do was kiss her, but I didn't do it out of respect for my girlfriend, it took a tremendous amount of self-control not to try to kiss her afterwards.

The chick knows that I have a girlfriend, she was very adamant about me admitting it to her and the same night that I told her I really liked her, I also asked her if she wanted to go on a date, she said she wanted to but not if I had a girlfriend. That tells you a lot about her. I really like her, she's funny, has a positive outlook on life and really easy going, she is also two years older than I am which adds to the attraction. I was reading online about how to deal with such crushes when you have a girlfriend, a common thing that came up was "don't give up someone you love for someone you like". That just doesn't resonate with me, I've admitted it to myself that I REALLY want to pursue something with this girl, I simply cannot stop thinking about her and I don't know that I can simply get over her.

So there you go, I love my girlfriend but our relationship isn't going too hot and we're going on a break and my opinion of breaks is that they result in break-ups. Then there's the girl that I really like and we have a lot of chemistry together which to be honest is a lot more than I ever had with my current girlfriend. So I'm wondering if I just settled for my current girlfriend because it was easy and the relationship was good enough to stay in it. To top it off, I'm going to San Francisco with just a vision and essentially diving into the deep end of the pool of uncertainty in terms of that. For now, I've deleted the girl's number from my phone and gave it to my roommate so he can give it back to me after the weekend. I did think about deleting her phone number and just force myself to get over her, but I just can't let her go, I can't do that, I'm falling real hard for this chick and I'm really hoping to spend a lot of time with her between my time in Yellowstone and when I have to leave for San Francisco, it's all I want to do.

So what do I do? How do I handle this situation? I know this could potentially blow up and hurt all three of us and leave me with nothing. What's a logical train of thought? How do I clear things up? How do I figure things out?

Thanks guys and sorry for the long read!