It started with the occasional question, which I initially didn’t think much of. My husband would ask about my past, the men I’d dated before him, and I would answer, thinking it was just natural curiosity. But soon, those questions started to feel more like an interrogation. It wasn’t just about the details—it was about something deeper, something more unsettling.

“I wonder if he treated you better than I do,” he’d say, almost wistfully, after I’d mentioned an old relationship. Or, “Was he more spontaneous than me?” The tone was always different, not playful, but filled with doubt—like he was searching for flaws in me, looking for signs that I wasn’t as committed as I should be. It wasn’t about knowing me better; it felt more like he was trying to find reasons to doubt me, to compare himself to ghosts from my past.

At first, I tried to reassure him. I told him that my exes were just that—exes. That they were a chapter of my life I had long closed. But the questions didn’t stop. They kept coming, each one digging deeper into a past I had worked so hard to move on from.

I began to notice the shift in him. He’d look at me with uncertainty, like he was measuring himself against these past versions of men who no longer had any place in my life. He would bring up their qualities in the middle of arguments, as if to remind me that they were somehow still lurking in our relationship, casting shadows on what we had.

It’s slowly creating a rift between us. I feel like I’m being pulled back into a past I’ve long forgotten, while he continues to linger there, unable to move forward. I love him deeply, but it’s becoming harder to carry the weight of this constant comparison.

Is this just insecurity, or is there something deeper at play? Because no matter how many times I reassure him, the rift between us continues to grow. And I’m starting to wonder if this is something we can fix, or if it’s already too late.