Dear Kaleel:

Reads to me that her experience with you has little to do with who  you are, and a whole lot to do with people in her past, most likely her parents. In other words, while with you, she is re-living her past. She felt worthless as a child, I am guessing, so she keeps feeling this way when with you. It doesn’t matter that you value her, what matters, in her current experience with you, is that her parents (I am guessing) didn’t value her.

This is not unusual, most people re-live their past. In your girlfriend’s case her past was very painful and therefore this is what she keeps experiencing.

You wrote, “I feel like i’m going no where”- that is because she is re-living her past, “but then sometimes I feel like i’m getting to her”- this is the little I referred to in the beginning, the little of who you are that is experiencing.

My suggestion is that she attends psychotherapy/ counseling with a capable therapist, so that she has a way to address her past experience (maybe ongoing), change what she can change and come to a place where she can experience more of the present and less of the past.

anita