I love my girlfriend to death. I don't even like calling her my girlfriend. She's my life partner, really.

My ex and I haven't been together in over 3 years. She and I had had sex about a year in to our relationship.... and broke up a couple months later when she had sex with someone else. After about a month of being really upset and trying to figure things out, I didn't talk to her for several months... then started talking to her again and we became pretty good friends again. I think I did that because I couldn't deal with how much it hurt to have been betrayed... so I pretended it never happened.

When I first got together with my girlfriend now, I was still talking to my ex regularly. For whatever reason, that didn't come up in our conversations, and I feel awful for it now. My girlfriend thought I only talked to her once in a blue moon. She felt betrayed, and rightfully so.

Almost not a single day goes by now without me being reminded that I've had someone before. I think somewhere deep down, she knows I love her more than anything in the world. But there's a part of her that's still always there that refuses to believe she's anything but a second. She has obsessively researched my ex online and will try to convince me that my ex is better than her.

I don't know if I've explained everything properly or not, but I don't even know what to do. I tell her every day how much I love her, how much I care, but she feels that I've given *everything* to my ex, and have nothing left to give her. I'm working on getting a necklace for her, and I'm making it myself to be as personal as possible. She badly wants this as a physical symbol of my love for her, but I'm unfortunately waiting on a paycheck to make this possible.

I don't even know what I'm asking for. Just, if anyone has any sort of advice, I'd just really appreciate it. I feel dead without her around, and feel like I'm losing her, even though I'm pretty sure I'm not. Thanks for reading.

~TheDeliciousDish