I'm a college freshman, and I'm making this post because I'm worried about how things are going with my new college boyfriend. There are a few things that you should know about me first before I go on to describe my (probably very standard) problem:

I've always been an extremely affectionate person - with my family, my friends, my past boyfriends. I go out of my way to do things to make them happy etc. I've also always been extremely jealous. I'm 19 years old - in my past relationship with my high school boyfriend (I dated him for about a year and a half) I was jealous to the point where I drove him crazy - I made no effort to keep my jealousy under control . That lead to fights and our eventual breakup. It took me a long time to get over it, because I truly did care about him a lot despite how selfishly I behaved. It was difficult to get back into single life because during our relationship we both became very attached to one another, to the point where we stopped spending time with our friends and only spent time with each other. To be honest, that was probably another reason for our breakup; I suppose we just started to get on each other's nerves.

Another thing you should know about me (although you probably guessed from the fact that I'm such a jealous person) is that I've had self-esteem issues for a very long time. The interesting thing is that sometimes I'm really confident - possibly to the point of being cocky - about my intelligence, but most of the time, despite knowing I go to one of the best universities in the country, I experience so much self doubt that I drive myself to tears calling myself 'stupid' and 'unworthy' of getting into said university. I'm also not confident about my physical appearance - again, sometimes I realise that I do have a fairly nice body and fairly pretty face, but most of the time I'm obsessing about my weight and my diet - I suppose it's worth mentioning that I ate very little for a long time and even tried to make myself throw up a couple of times recently (I wasn't successful, probably because I didn't really want to do it, since bulimia is complicated and I don't want to do that to myself). Anyway, I feel like I have a very warped vision of myself, and see myself very differently from how other people see me. The good thing is I realise my tendency to do that and so sometimes I can step back and stop myself from basically driving myself crazy.

Anyway, on to the problem of my relationship with my boyfriend. We basically hit it off straight from day 1. We were both physically attracted to each other, we had a lot in common, and we just got along really really well - I've never got along with someone as well as I have with him. Anyway, we ended up having casual sex many times - well, it was probably casual for him, but not for me, because he was my first. We started to spend a lot of time together because we genuinely had so much fun hanging out with each other. It was basically looking like a 'friends with benefits' thing. All throughout this, he continued to flirt with other girls and even had sex with another girl one night (but he did tell me he was going to do it; he just thought it didn't matter to me). As you can imagine, I was upset about all the flirting etc - sometimes, when we were drunk, I would get angry and tell him how I felt. All through this we continued to spend time together, just the two of us, as friends, and we also kept 'hooking up'. I realised that I wanted to have a serious relationship with him, and I made that clear, but for weeks he pushed away the idea and said he didn't feel that way about me. That, combined with all the flirting with other girls, completely crushed me and crushed my confidence. We eventually started to officially date each other after a few weeks when he told me he realised he did want to have that kind of relationship with me. The thing is, I couldn't even bring myself to believe that he did care about me because of the things he said and did in those first few weeks, and even now, even though I know we weren't going out during that time and he wasn't obliged to stop flirting with other girls etc, I still feel hurt about it.

Now, I feel jealous when he talks to other girls - not all girls, just a few girls who I can tell he is physically attracted to. He kind of flirts with them sometimes…although I can't be sure because I am such a jealous person I feel like he could be just talking to them and I'm perceiving it as him flirting (although there have been instances where I'm quite sure he has crossed the line). I never mentioned any of this to him because I didn't want a repeat of what happened in my previous relationship. I know he keeps in touch with other girls he was interested in/hooked up with/was 'friends with benefits' with over text, and it bothers me, but I don't tell him anything, partly because I don't know if I have the right to tell him it upsets me, and mainly because I want to avoid a fight, because we have had fights before and I want to minimise those as much as possible because I really like him and I'd like to maintain my relationship with him. However, I was once on his phone looking through his messages (I feel like a horrible person for doing that, but he's done it too, in front of me, so I somehow told myself that if he could do it, so could I). I saw an exchange of messages with a girl from his town whom he used to regularly hook up with (he didn't tell me about this, but I could tell from the previous messages) and whom he almost decided to date, only he couldn't because they ran out of time since they had to go off to different universities. He sounded very, very friendly in his most recent messages (which were sent just that day) - he didn't even talk to me like that over text - and he was enquiring about her romantic life. She asked him about his, and he didn't mention me - he was giving her the impression that he was still single. I felt very upset about this but as usual I didn't say anything to him and pretended everything was normal, although when I was alone, I cried about it because it hurt me, and I was confused about whether I had the right to be upset about that or not, since it wasn't for me to know. There have been a few more incidents of him flirting with other girls but I don't trust myself at all, and I don't know if I just exaggerated everything in my mind (although I did talk to a friend about what happened, and she agreed that he may have been crossing the line if he behaved as I described). I can see his activity on social media and I see that he is 'liking' other girls' photos (including the girl I mentioned before; the one who he almost dated), and this bothers me, but I tell myself it's ridiculous and that I can't expect him to stop being attracted to other girls (although I wish that could happen). He's gone home for Christmas and I know he can and probably will meet these other girls, and, of course, I'm not saying anything to him about it. I am very upset on the inside but I'm trying my best not to show anything to him because we genuinely do get along so well. I know that eventually it's all going to spill out and lead to a big fight unless I can fight it on my own.

Another thing that bothers me and adds to the whole problem is that I feel that I care about him a lot more than he cares about me - this was clearly the case in the beginning, when I was the only one to express interest in a serious relationship, but I still feel it is the case now, because I told him I loved him and he, of course, didn't say it back to me (I wasn't expecting him to; I saw it coming).

I don't want my jealousy to take over my life and take over my relationship, but I can't seem to silence it. Help!!