It's really too bad about what your girlfriend went through. It didn't start with this guy abusing her. Something in her was broken before she ran into him. That's why he bypassed other women and selected her. He knew he could control her because life had already rendered her controllable. She kind of knows that herself. That's why she feels bad about herself. It goes back to before she met him. What she did for him was not done out of love and loyalty. She tends to be passive. All that isn't changed just because she ran into you.

It's not enough for her life to be decent now, only because she is with you and you're a decent guy. What if you get struck dead by lightning tomorrow and the next guy she runs into is another creep. She can only start to be okay, if she gets to where whether or not she exists at the level of human garbage does not depend on what guy she happens to be with at the moment. She has to want to save herself. You can be enormously important to her, but she can't just be totally dependent on you.

This young woman needs to become employed or get training leading to employment. She needs to learn to take care of herself. That doesn't have to happen by next week, but that has to be what she is going in the direction towards. Otherwise, you might as well be just another John . . . a nice one, maybe, but still a guy who decides her fate for her.

You can't give her back her self-respect. But you can be supportive of her earning that for herself. Part of the role for you to play is for you to have constructive expectations of her. You have to expect that she will not just spend a lot of time in bed, or on the couch, lamenting her past. If she needs treatment for depression, encourage her to get it. Anyone who is depressed is responsible for engaging in a plan to manage the depression. That means having a plan for how she will spend the day. If this sounds a little like tough love, you can go ahead and call it that. She needs warmth and affection, but she also needs for someone she respects to have healthy expectations of her. That's a way of believing in her. You'll never help her by being okay with her laying around the house just keeping herself sexually available to you. That's just perpetuating the life she had in the past.

If the two of you are making healthy plans for how her time and yours is going to be spent doing the constructive things that need doing to have a responsible life together, then a lot of the images in your mind will start to fade. They will be replaced by new images of her having new little successes that she builds on. This is how her self-image will change.