You’re Not Heartbroken, You’re Just Addicted to Pain: Gita on Toxic Love
Riya Kumari | Jul 22, 2025, 21:36 IST
( Image credit : Times Life Bureau )
Let’s start with the hard pill: heartbreak isn’t always heartbreak. Sometimes, it’s just your nervous system cosplaying grief because it doesn’t know what to do without chaos. I know. Ouch. But also, hello, truth bomb. See, if you’ve ever found yourself cry-scrolling through his feed at 2 a.m., listening to “Channa Mereya” like it’s a personality, you’re not alone. We've all been there, swaddled in old texts, red flags waving like they're compliments, saying things like, “But he wasn’t that bad.”
Let’s drop the romanticized heartbreak narrative for a second. Because this isn’t about candlelit tears or poetry on pain. This is about the quiet, everyday violence we inflict on ourselves in the name of love. Staying when it breaks us. Shrinking ourselves to be chosen. Calling it sacrifice when it’s actually self-abandonment. And you tell yourself: This is what love is. If I’m not hurting, it must not be real. If I’m not giving till I bleed, it’s not devotion. If I stop chasing, it’ll disappear. But here’s the thing the Bhagavad Gita says with unwavering clarity, love does not require your destruction. Attachment does.
1. You’re Not in Love. You’re in Self-Erasion Disguised as Devotion
There’s a voice in your head that says: “If I don’t give up everything for them, was it even real?” But that’s not love speaking. That’s conditioning. Real love does not demand your silence, your exhaustion, or your identity as proof. It doesn’t say, “Make yourself small, so I can feel big.” It says, “Be whole, and meet me whole.” But you were taught, by culture, by movies, maybe by your own trauma, that pain proves love. So when it hurts, you stay. And when you feel invisible, you call it loyalty.
But Krishna doesn’t call that bhakti (devotion). He calls that moha, delusion. The Gita says: “When you let go of attachment, fear, and anger, you become truly free.” Love without boundaries is not surrender. It’s a slow form of self-erasure. And you were never born to disappear in someone else’s story.
2. You Think the More You Hurt, the More You Deserve
There’s a haunting belief in many of us: If I’m constantly suffering for someone, maybe I’ll finally become “enough” for them. You stay up imagining the worst-case scenario. You read too much into every pause, every reply, every missed call. You say sorry for being too much, too emotional, too available. But the truth is, you don’t actually fear losing them.
You fear confirming your deepest suspicion, that you were never good enough to be loved in the first place. So, you preempt rejection by rejecting yourself first. You sabotage love before it can love you back. And then you call it fate. But Krishna would remind you: that voice is not truth. It’s habit. It’s vasana, your old karmic groove. And the Gita doesn’t ask you to fight it. It asks you to become aware of it. To see it, and still choose peace.
3. You Think Detachment Will Magically Fix Them
Let’s be honest, sometimes we pretend to be “detached” not because we’ve risen above attachment, but because we secretly think detachment will bring them back.
“I won’t text him. I’ll manifest him.”
“I’ll act unbothered, and maybe then they’ll see my worth.”
But detachment is not a strategy. It’s a state of wholeness. It doesn’t guarantee that they’ll return. It guarantees that you will survive, even if they don’t. The Gita says: “Let your concern be with action alone, never with the results.” Meaning? Your healing was never meant to manipulate someone else into staying. You don’t practice detachment so they come back. You practice it so you don’t lose yourself whether they stay or go.
4. You Think Love is Losing Yourself in Another
Maybe you don’t remember who you were before the relationship. Maybe you gave so much of yourself away, you’re left holding fragments of someone else’s identity. No friends. No boundaries. No inner anchor. Just an emotional life that rises and falls based on someone else’s mood. And still, you ask: Why did they leave? Sometimes, people leave not because they’re cruel, but because they cannot carry the weight of your unhealed fear.
You needed them to be your ground, your god, your therapist, your everything. But no one, no matter how much they love you, can survive being responsible for your inner emptiness. The Gita doesn’t say: “Find your worth in someone.” It says: “Lift yourself by yourself. Do not degrade yourself. You are your own friend and your own enemy.”
This Isn’t the End of Love. It’s the Beginning of Real Love
The problem was never that you loved too much. The problem was you forgot to love yourself just as fiercely. You thought sacrificing your needs made you worthy. You thought accepting pain was a form of grace. You thought enduring mistreatment was a noble badge. But it wasn’t grace. It was fear in a beautiful costume.
The Gita doesn’t ask you to stop loving others. It simply asks you to love without chains. To let love flow through you, not consume you. To let go when it hurts your soul, not just your ego. To remember that your peace is not a bargaining chip. It’s a birthright.
So no, you’re not heartbroken. You’re just detoxing from the belief that pain is love. And once that clears, you’ll remember who you were before the ache, before the attachment, before the identity. And that, my friend, is not the end. It’s the rebirth.
1. You’re Not in Love. You’re in Self-Erasion Disguised as Devotion
Shrink
( Image credit : Unsplash )
There’s a voice in your head that says: “If I don’t give up everything for them, was it even real?” But that’s not love speaking. That’s conditioning. Real love does not demand your silence, your exhaustion, or your identity as proof. It doesn’t say, “Make yourself small, so I can feel big.” It says, “Be whole, and meet me whole.” But you were taught, by culture, by movies, maybe by your own trauma, that pain proves love. So when it hurts, you stay. And when you feel invisible, you call it loyalty.
But Krishna doesn’t call that bhakti (devotion). He calls that moha, delusion. The Gita says: “When you let go of attachment, fear, and anger, you become truly free.” Love without boundaries is not surrender. It’s a slow form of self-erasure. And you were never born to disappear in someone else’s story.
2. You Think the More You Hurt, the More You Deserve
Fight
( Image credit : Unsplash )
There’s a haunting belief in many of us: If I’m constantly suffering for someone, maybe I’ll finally become “enough” for them. You stay up imagining the worst-case scenario. You read too much into every pause, every reply, every missed call. You say sorry for being too much, too emotional, too available. But the truth is, you don’t actually fear losing them.
You fear confirming your deepest suspicion, that you were never good enough to be loved in the first place. So, you preempt rejection by rejecting yourself first. You sabotage love before it can love you back. And then you call it fate. But Krishna would remind you: that voice is not truth. It’s habit. It’s vasana, your old karmic groove. And the Gita doesn’t ask you to fight it. It asks you to become aware of it. To see it, and still choose peace.
3. You Think Detachment Will Magically Fix Them
Breakup
( Image credit : Unsplash )
Let’s be honest, sometimes we pretend to be “detached” not because we’ve risen above attachment, but because we secretly think detachment will bring them back.
“I won’t text him. I’ll manifest him.”
“I’ll act unbothered, and maybe then they’ll see my worth.”
But detachment is not a strategy. It’s a state of wholeness. It doesn’t guarantee that they’ll return. It guarantees that you will survive, even if they don’t. The Gita says: “Let your concern be with action alone, never with the results.” Meaning? Your healing was never meant to manipulate someone else into staying. You don’t practice detachment so they come back. You practice it so you don’t lose yourself whether they stay or go.
4. You Think Love is Losing Yourself in Another
Attachment
( Image credit : Unsplash )
Maybe you don’t remember who you were before the relationship. Maybe you gave so much of yourself away, you’re left holding fragments of someone else’s identity. No friends. No boundaries. No inner anchor. Just an emotional life that rises and falls based on someone else’s mood. And still, you ask: Why did they leave? Sometimes, people leave not because they’re cruel, but because they cannot carry the weight of your unhealed fear.
You needed them to be your ground, your god, your therapist, your everything. But no one, no matter how much they love you, can survive being responsible for your inner emptiness. The Gita doesn’t say: “Find your worth in someone.” It says: “Lift yourself by yourself. Do not degrade yourself. You are your own friend and your own enemy.”
This Isn’t the End of Love. It’s the Beginning of Real Love
The Gita doesn’t ask you to stop loving others. It simply asks you to love without chains. To let love flow through you, not consume you. To let go when it hurts your soul, not just your ego. To remember that your peace is not a bargaining chip. It’s a birthright.
So no, you’re not heartbroken. You’re just detoxing from the belief that pain is love. And once that clears, you’ll remember who you were before the ache, before the attachment, before the identity. And that, my friend, is not the end. It’s the rebirth.