philosophy of ....

So a question was posed to me who is my special friend? Well, actually I mis-spoke. I meant to say "special-lady." See I combined, special lady with ladyfriend, getting special friend. Now, you may be asking, what is the difference? According to the Dude (from The Big Lebowski) a ladyfriend is someone whom he is helping conceive. So I am certainly not helping anyone conceive right now, so I do not have a ladyfriend, but I do have someone that I would classify as a special lady. Which brings me to the next question. What is the difference between a girlfriend and a special-lady? I am not sure if I know, but this blog entry will be discussing the philosophy of girlfriends. I assume that a special lady is someone who one would date and be somewhat seriously dating. How is this different from a girlfriend. I assume that when one has a girlfriend that one usually lives in the same city or even area, if not state, as one's girl friend. My special lady does not live in TX but lives in Illinois. Technically we have only gone on at the most 5 dates, so do you need to go on more dates with someone for them to be your girlfriend/boyfriend? And, I won't be able to go on another date with her until May 25... so I will have known her for almost a year by then and only gone out on 5 dates. But are the terms "special-lady" and "girlfriend" substitutable? For instance, if X has a special-lady, then does X have a girlfriend, OR, if X has a girlfriend, does X have a special-lady? If one is a special lady then is one in the class of girlfriend? I really don't know, I just assume that for one to have a girlfriend one must live in the same general location... but I have been wrong before...