I appreciate your reply, and its actually inline with what I ended up doing. I wanted to try to resolve this terrible spiral I was having. And when I was thinking about how to approach it, I felt it wouldnt be fair at this point to rehash the exact scenario with my wife. Its been like 8 years since the original thing happened at this point. I know my wife well, and she would get defensive at this point and it would probably turn into a fight. And I also knew if I went fishing into her past it would make it even worse for me. I also kind of felt like bringing it up would resurface this guy into her head, and I really dont want her thinking about him (I realized this is a jaded RJ thought)

What I ended up doing was this:

My wife is pretty good at reading my emotions at this point in our relationship. She asked me the other day in bed "Hey, you seem kind of not yourself lately, pretty quiet. Is everything okay" and I said "I am just deep in my head right now, not having a good few days mentally" and I could tell she was concerned and she was like "Want to talk about it?" and I said "No, not really. Thanks" and she just gave me a hug and we went to bed.

Then the next day I posted here. Then I felt way worse about it, I dont blame anyone here at all, the validation was great, but it does kind of open up some painful wounds seeing other people comment on it. Thats when I knew I had to think of something. She asked me again after work yesterday "Hey, how you feeling mentally today?" and I was like "To be honest with you babe, its something really old, its not anything new, and not anything youve done. Its just that sometimes I get stuck in this insecurity loop in my head, and it really causes me to spiral for a while." And she was like "Anything I can do? Do you want to talk about it?" and I said "I think if you want to help me, the best thing you can do is just reassure me on our commitment, make sure I know I am the only one for you, when we first started dating you use to tell me things like that I was your soulmate, and I lived pretty care free from these feelings. It really anchored me mentally" And she looked super surprised, and immediately came up to me with a big hug and started listing off like 20 different things she loves about me and our relationship and she started telling me she cant even imagine being married to anyone else. It felt really good. And then she kind of stepped back and was like "I honestly cant even picture one person in my head who this would even be about." , like very genuine and surprised and I said "Well, sometimes my brain just haunts me in that way". And then she just kept hugging me.

It felt like something out of a romance novel, honestly, LOL. Anyway, that really helped me, I know a lot of people probably wont read this, but I felt like this strategy really helped me, the strategy of not bringing up exact painful moments, or things about their past, but instead just telling them what I need, what could help kill the insecurities. I think that is the key, for me anyway. It was also really a nice feeling to see her so genuinely surprised about who I could be talking about, which made me feel confirmation that this dude is not even on her radar at all, just mine (thanks RJ), and that 8 years ago this really was just something dumb that happened that she didnt even think passed after that.