Have someone with you next time you try the pairs, who 'know their denims', so they can give you their opinions whilst trying each of them on. That should help you decide which you look better in.
If you want to buy skinny jeans, I'll tell you this, the ONLY skinnies I'd recommend are from April 77, as most other skinny jeans (at least in my experience) are not worth buying. But nowadays, although there's maybe 1% of the male population that wears skinny jeans well, that don't fall into the stereotypical categories of trendwhores, hipsters, indies, emos etc. it's just so rare and instead you see people who do fall into said categories, who make that less that 1% degradad.
I personally tend not to wear jeans at all. And if you think about it, all jeans are 'trends' in that sense, so by not wearing 'skinny jeans' you are no less of a trend follower.
Another thing is: to those girls who say that they prefer their 'guys to have balls'= no skinny jeans. Well, you need to have some balls in the first place to know that as a fact.
And OP, I don't wish to intimidate you, but if you felt like your crotch area was being crushed, then you probably weren't wearing it correctly.