Who's the Mystery Girl? Ask Auntie SparkNotes.

Auntie SparkNotes missed you all terribly during our little technical mishap last week! So to make up for it, there will be not one, but TWO advice posts this week. (You're welcome.) First up, a girl with a crush:

I have a dilemma, obviously. I’ve had a crush on the same boy for nearly a year, which is a pretty big deal for me. He makes me feel confident and needed, makes me laugh, and I can totally be myself around him. The problem is, he has no idea how I feel about him.

I had been silently pining for months when he broke up with his girlfriend of three years. I had been the shoulder he cried on, for lack of a better term. From then on he told me everything, and he’s said on many occasion he tells me things about himself and his life that he could never tell anyone else. He’d ‘explode’ without me.

So, a few months passed like this, me pining and him having no clue, when he told me that he liked two girls: One that he was crazy about but could never work, and one that he found cute and funny and really sweet but he didn’t feel comfortable telling me who the second girl was just yet.

This got my hopes up; ‘was I the mystery girl?’ I drove myself crazy trying to figure it out.

Then, I signed on facebook one day and found him ‘in a relationship’. It wasn’t the girl he said it could never work with, so I resigned myself to the fact that she was the mystery gal.

Nope.

He had met her at party days before. So now I’m left wondering who the mystery girl really was, and if I should just give up. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get over him. What’s your advice?

Well, ugh. That situation sounds brutal, and like an awful letdown for you. Auntie SparkNotes won't tell you that there's an important lesson to be learned here about not pining away in silence, but... but… oh, I can't help myself. Don't pine away in silence! It's always better to let someone know how you feel and risk being rejected, than it is to keep your mouth shut and risk wondering forever whether things could have been different.

However. Big unspoken crushes are like the Lochness Monster: even the most seeeecret of these secret beasts will rear its head once or twice over the course of a year, which means that your guy might not have been completely oblivious to your feelings. (Unrelated: The Lochness Monster is real.) Especially because the “Mystery Girl” routine is a classic tease move that dangles the possibility of romance before a person you suspect might be interested in you. It provides enough hint-y intrigue to keep them hooked, but enough ambiguity that you can back out with no promises made. After all, look what happened here: just when you might have been ready to refocus your affections elsewhere, you got dragged back via the possibility of a romance just around the corner.

Which is why, incidentally, the Mystery Girl routine is often the province of wimps and wafflers.

So, were you the MG? I'm not psychic, but let's say that it seems pretty likely. And now you've got two possibilities to consider:

Scenario #1: Your crush mentioned his Mystery Girl in order to keep you interested, but forgot all about his feelings—and yours—when he met girl-from-the-party, and decided to date her instead.

Scenario #2: Your crush mentioned his Mystery Girl in the hope that you’d throw some yes-I-like-you affirmation his way. (“Oh, how interesting, because I have a Mystery Crush myself. A really mysterious Mystery Crush whose identity you will never be able to guess and ohfortheloveofallthatisholy it's you. YOUUUUUUUUUUUU! Now kiss me, you stallion!”)

As you can see, Scenario #1 is dependent upon your crush being an inconsiderate player-type, whereas Scenario #2 puts him in a more common category: Dumb But Not Malicious. You know him best: which scenario seems more likely? If it's #2, then now is the time to talk to him. Because—say it with me—it’s better to speak up and get rejected than wonderwonderwonder forever what might’ve been. Try this:

You: (nonchalantly) So, whatever happened to your Mystery Girl? ‘Cause I was starting to think she might be somebody I know.

Got your own idea about the Mystery Girl? Is it you? It is ME?! Leave your questions and comments below, or email queries to advice@sparknotes.com.