I’m a married woman, and I deeply love my husband, but there’s a shadow that follows us around—his retroactive jealousy. He struggles with it constantly, almost like a silent third partner in our relationship. He frequently compares himself to the men from my past, obsessing over details that I’d nearly forgotten myself. It’s as if he’s always measuring himself against people who are no longer part of my life, but somehow they are still here, lingering in his mind.

When we first started dating, I was honest about my past relationships. I never thought it would matter because I had moved on, choosing him as my life partner. Yet, over time, I noticed little things. He would ask questions about my exes—how they treated me, what they did for a living, and what our intimate moments were like. At first, I thought he was simply curious, trying to understand my past. But it quickly became clear that these questions weren’t innocent. They were loaded with insecurity, and my answers seemed to unsettle him, no matter how gently I framed them.

It’s painful for me to see him get caught in this cycle. His self-worth seems tied up in comparisons that I never asked him to make, and it’s exhausting for both of us. I don’t want to feel like I have to censor my own memories to protect his feelings. I’m always reassuring him that he’s the person I chose, the one I love and want to be with. But my words seem to lose their weight when he’s deep in one of his bouts of retroactive jealousy, imagining things that aren’t there.

Sometimes, I wonder if this fixation is a form of being “cucked.” It’s as if he’s willingly tormenting himself with ideas of my past lovers, even though they hold no place in my present. It makes me feel powerless, watching him battle ghosts that I can’t exorcise for him, leaving us both in a strange, painful limbo.