How to help my girlfriend see that she is worthy of love?
girlfriend (21f) and I (21m) have been dating since junior year of high school, and now we are in college and have an apartment together off campus. We’ve been together about 5 years give or take. I play baseball and am hoping to get a shot at the pros one day. She is more into books and animals and hopes to be a veterinarian one day. I’ve known her since 6th grade, she has a very unique name from the 20s, and she has beautiful red hair and adorable glasses. I’ve known her since 6th grade, and while she was bullied and teased a lot for loving reptiles (one time she brought a gecko to school and kids killed it. It was horrible) me and the other “jocks” thought she was hilarious and fun. Freshman year of high school I dated a cheerleader, and honestly she had no personality beyond her looks. She drove a Mercedes and had all designer clothes. We dated for about a year until I caught her cheating. I gave her the chance to reconcile under the condition that she never talk to the guy again but she ended up leaving me for him. Fast forward to junior year me and my current gf had a class together, and we partnered up for a lab project and I was very into how smart she was. It all hit a point when I invited her over to work on the project and she wore a beautiful sundress and got along great with my parents. I’ll admit, I broke, before she left I gently but firmly kissed her. She kissed me back. I asked her on a date and she was flattered and said yes, within a week we were official, but then the issue of her feeling inadequate came up. She has never been able to accept that a “jock” could be into her. I try to tell her now beautiful she is. And it’s not even the looks for me. I tried dating a “hot girl” and you know it never felt happy. She is just hilarious. When we became official I put her in a group chat on snap with my buddies and their girlfriends and one of my buddies introduced himself as a wrestler and she said “is that even a sport?” And everyone was like “damn burnnnnn” and even the wrestler thought it was HILARIOUS. She comes to all of my games and fully believes someday I will be pitching in the majors. But honestly I want to be more like her. If she follows through with veterinary work I think she would be contributing a lot more to the world than a man pitching curveballs. The other night was very hard. She got drunk (which I love her to death but she is not seldom in doing that unfortunately) and basically just put herself down for hours. Told me I should dump her and find a hotter girl, date a celebrity if I make it pro. But it seems like no matter how many times I tell her she’s the only one for me and that I love her, she just can’t understand why. I don’t want her to live her life thinking she is inadequate when she is quite literally the funniest and prettiest person I know. What should I say? What should I do? How do I approach this? Again she is the most fascinating and intelligent person I know. She wanted a garden, I told her we lived in an apartment. She asked to borrow my truck and went to the store and BUILT a raised bed and planted veggies in it on our balcony. We already have a couple tomatoes coming in. She has a 13 foot Burmese python that she takes everywhere. She is tiny, 5’ 2” and 100 pounds yet she carries this massive snake around without any fear. I’ll admit the snake I could’ve done without, I’ll stick to my australian Shepard, but it has grown on me. It’s fun to feed it thawed bunnies. And on top of that she lets me LIVE and supports me. I grew up on a farm and during the summer she goes with me to my parents and all 5’2” and 100 pounds of her carries feed bags all day to the fields. She goes fishing and hunting with me. When I won state my senior year she dogpiled me in the field. As insecure as she is about being worthy, she is very confident and honest about herself at the same time in every other area. She can go from doing her makeup and shopping and playing guitar; normal young woman things, to carrying around a 13 foot python and she’s anything but a normal woman. I just need her to be more confident in her worthiness of love
TL;DR
My girlfriend doesn’t feel she is worthy of being with me due to our different stereotype categories, and I want her to believe she is.