Ways to show her I am attracted to her? I desperately need help :(

[fg91]

So, I'm a 20 year old guy who's madly in love with a girl who I met at university roughly 2 years ago. Right from day one we clicked and instantly became really
good friends. During this stage of the friendship, it was purely platonic and never thought it would lead to any relationship of any sort, as we would treat each
other purely as friends. I had never had a proper relationship prior to this, and would freely compliment other girls without any worry, after all I was single at the
time. But I couldn't doubt it, feelings did start developing over the course of our friendship because of how well we got along. I wasn't sure if the feeling was
mutual, so I decided to not act on it for the time being unless other signs showed up. Until almost two months into the friendship, all it took was some playful
joking which lead to us kissing for the first time. That then was the starting of an amazing relationship, which has been going for almost 22 months now.

She is a bubbly and wonderful girl, and due to it being my first proper relationship, was unsure on the finer details of handling a relationship. She had insecurities at the beginning, but I promised to work on them with her in order to help her feel better. The problem that arose was the fact that she would feel threatened by other female friends that I had that I would run into at uni that I knew before I had met her, and because they were good looking she would feel that she wasn't good enough for me. I made the stupid error of not reassuring her properly, and as perfect as I treated her as a girlfriend, I did not compliment her enough in regards to how she looks, and that no matter how pretty my other friends were that she was better looking than they were. She took this as a sign of me not being attracted to her, but as we had confessed our love for eachother and our relationship grew more and more serious as time went on, she bottled up her worries and just thought that this problem would clear up over time. She was madly in love with me at the time and would do anything to keep me as her boyfriend, because she really believed a future was possible.

My way of reassuring her wasn't the best; accepting that I had good looking friends and expecting her to see that since I chose to be with her that she should automatically feel better, that she was ahead of them in all aspects. It didn't work out that way, and it has been surfacing for the past month or so. In the past month, she has been putting herself on strict diets, going to the gym, and her insecurity levels have sky-rocketed. She claims to be "wanting to stay healthy" at the beginning but after a few discussions she cracked and admitted it was because she wanted to "look like all my hot friends" so that I can maybe compliment her the way I did to them. She is a beautiful girl with a great body, but she has been pushed to the point where she hates herself and despises to even look in the mirror because she thinks she is disgusting. I have tried with all I can to help her slowly change the way she thinks, but she does not believe a word of my compliments. She constantly thinks that I am not attracted to her at all, but it is completely not the case. I am and always have been attracted to her, and I highlight that by reminding her that attraction is a large factor of loving eachother. I admit, and have to her, that I did go wrong but was completely unaware of it, which by looking back at now, seems pretty stupid of myself. I just want to make it up to her, because the one thing that hurt me the most in the past couple of weeks is how cold and less caring she has become. She claims that she still loves me, or else she would not still be trying, but not as much as she did before, the unconditonal love she had for me isn't there anymore :'( I just would love to know any way I can help her feel better about herself, to show her that I am indeed attracted to her, and some way she will love me unconditionally, like I do with her now, and promised her that I will for as long as I can. Because I don't want to lose her. The memories together have been wonderful and I would never forgive myself if I lost the love of my life due to my stupidity, then knowing later on I could have fixed it.

So, any advice would be GREATLY appreciated. I know my faults and what I did wrong, but I'd love to hear what a girl in this situation would want that could help her fix this problem? Maybe a girl that's gone through a similar problem and how she fixed it? Anything, I just want our relationship to be the wonderful and loving one we had before.

[carl1222]

Maybe it was the kind of reassurances you gave her that got you into this mess. Here's what she may be hearing: "Honey, I have a lot of good looking female friends, and even though you are not as good looking as they are, I choose to be with you instead, so don't worry."

Not your intended message of course.

Advice: Give her tons of reassurance. Make her feel like the princess you believe she is. Be very affectionate ... and do NOT say anything that compares her in any way to these other girls!