It was another quiet evening when my husband brought up the past again. This time, he casually mentioned the name of an ex I hadn’t thought about in years. “Do you think about him often?” he asked, his tone trying to sound neutral, but I could hear the insecurity behind it.

I paused, caught off guard. “No, of course not. That was a long time ago,” I replied, hoping to move past the conversation. But as usual, it wasn’t that easy.

His questions always follow the same pattern—he wants to know every detail about my old relationships, as if comparing himself to the ghosts of my past will somehow make him feel better. It doesn’t. I’ve told him countless times that he’s the man I chose, the man I love. But it’s like he’s stuck in a time warp, haunted by things that don’t matter anymore.

His retroactive jealousy is exhausting, for both of us. I love him, but his obsession with my past relationships makes it hard to feel fully present with him. I don’t know how to help him see that the past is irrelevant. What we have now is real, but he’s too wrapped up in comparisons to see it.