As a clinical psychotherapist and many years of experience in relationship dynamics, you’re dealing with some level of desire and attraction hidden in resentment and pain. On the surface, the healing process looks like overcoming resentment and pain, but deep down those emotions cannot exist without yearning and attachment.

Look at it this way to simplify it all to the most reductive level. If a random person passing you on the street who you didn’t notice even existed insulted you, you’d probably laugh and walk away. If your mother or father or anyone you had an attachment of love to insulted you in the same manner, it would hurt you deeply. The factor that makes the difference is your attachment to the individual.

If your gf wasn’t still in love or in yearning for her ex, she wouldn’t need proof of what love is. Your love towards her means nothing. That’s not what SHE feels. It’s her love towards you that she needs to feel. It’s her uncontrollable desire towards you that dictates what “love” looks like to her.

You can’t show someone love…it’s a feeling…that only she can feel…and she currently feels that for someone else. That’s the harsh reality you need to face regardless of how YOU feel about her.

My best advice is to walk away with respect and explain that you need her to overcome her past on her own before you can dedicate any part of you to her. She may cry, she may insult you, she may blame you. But the reality is that you’re only a shoulder to cry on, a crutch that is being taken away and it’s the only way for her to truly heal. To learn how to walk on her own again. And if you truly mean something to her, she’ll return because you displayed respect for yourself and for her. And that’s what she lacked in her past relationship which will click for her once she heals and she’ll respect and truly fall for you.

If she doesn’t come back, she was going to leave you once she finished drying her tears on you anyway. Take it from someone who has been through it and who has helped BOTH parties recognize this when doing relationship work with both sides of the picture.