Dealing with a Girlfriend’s Ex Boyfriend?

I met a girl on a matchmaking service as I could use a diversion for my time while overseas as a deployed soldier in Iraq. She and I spoke for six months online before I was able to come home and finally meet her. We talked about everything- including past relationships. She mentioned how she had lived with an older guy for three years when she turned 18, but that she broke it off because she thought he had cheated on her, he didn’t treat her well, and he wasn’t willing to settle down and marry her. Once we met, she and I fell in love and everything was great for the first several months of our relationship- I even moved in with her after leaving the Army.

She introduced me to many of her friends, one of them a guy who we will call Rick. Rick was very nice to me, always buying me drinks, and he even offered me a job if I wanted it as I had just left the service. My GF had started a restaurant, and Rick’s contracting company did the majority of the work on the building because she had asked him to do it. Rick even had an office upstairs in the building for his contracting company- right next to my GF’s. When my GFs restaurant opened its doors, my GF hired Rick’s sister to be his bookkeeper- and I was also introduced by my GF to Rick’s entire family when they came in for dinner (which was fairly often). Rick helped bartend for the opening night of the restaurant. My GF was best friends with Rick’s brother’s wife, and my GF would always run to Rick when there were problems with the restaurant. There were several times when I found them upstairs together- alone, talking about things with the door closed. I had my suspicions, so I asked my GF how she got to know Rick- and she said he was just a friend she had known through her best friend (the one who was married to Rick’s brother).

It wasn’t until we had been actually dating for six months (but talking for over a year) that I discovered the truth about my GF and Rick, just by casual conversation when someone told me he had given her a cheap rate on the construction for the restaurant because they had dated in the past. As I’m sure you know by now, Rick was the guy my GF had lived with for three years. I confronted her about it, and her response was that yes, they had lived together and dated, but that things between them were over. I told her I didn’t want her to talk to him anymore- but it was an impossible request. His sister worked for her, he had a contract for the office upstairs (so he would almost be guaranteed to see her every day for the next two years) and her best friend was married to his brother, so it would be hard for her to see her best friend without occasionally seeing him as well.

I started snooping around to satisfy my curiosity. Even though it had been a couple years since they dated, she still had BOXES of photos of them together on beaches in Mexico and Jamaica- a place she and I were planning to go. She had an “I Love You” video she made for him still on her computer. There were no photos of any other person she dated- just pictures of those two together. When I confronted her about this, she did throw the pictures away, but only after I told her about them.

My GF reassured me that there was nothing going on, and I believed her. Rick told me the same thing when he found out I knew. I don’t think she wants to date him, but I think that for whatever reason she likes having him around. It has been five months since I learned of this, and I still can’t get over it- how inconsiderate she was to put me in this situation, how she deceived me by lying about it/not telling me about it