Feeling trapped? The Gita Says Love Feels Right Only When You Can Be Yourself

We don’t lose love because it fades. We lose love because at some point, we stop feeling free. People don’t say this out loud, but every relationship has a turning point: the moment you realize you’re no longer choosing, you’re enduring. This isn’t philosophy. It’s a simple human truth: when your freedom goes, your resentment begins. And no amount of “love” can survive that.



Sometimes the person doesn’t mean harm. Sometimes they’re not cruel. They’re just scared. But fear does strange things. It makes people confuse control with care. It makes them police your choices, your time, your dreams, not because they don’t love you, but because they don’t trust life. And slowly, love becomes a room without windows. You stop being seen. You start being managed. Your softness becomes a threat. Your independence becomes an insult.
It feels like concern at first. Until one day you realize you’re asking permission to be yourself. And then the hatred starts, not towards them, but towards the version of yourself you’ve become. Because deep down you know: love should not feel like you’re slowly disappearing. What the Gita teaches us is simple: Love cannot survive where freedom is denied. Because freedom is not selfishness, it is the oxygen relationships need to breathe.

Some people don’t want to dim your light. They just want it low enough so it doesn’t remind them of their own darkness. They like you bright, but not blinding. Confident, but not too confident. Growing, but not outgrowing them. They keep you close by keeping you small, not out of cruelty, but out of fear of losing you. They see your potential before you do. They see your growth. They see your courage. And out of fear of losing you, they start clipping your wings softly, with emotional manipulation, guilt, subtle comments. They don’t want to hurt you. But they also don’t want you to outgrow them. So they try to keep you close by keeping you unsure of yourself.
If you are someone meant for more, someone born for expansion, such connections will always feel like a cage, soft, familiar, but still a cage. And your soul will keep whispering: “You were not born to shrink just to stay.”



Every soul has a direction. Every person has a purpose that unfolds slowly, sometimes painfully, but always truthfully. When someone interferes with that journey, even with good intentions, they block not just your growth, but their own. Two people cannot rise inside a space built on fear. When you stay somewhere that restricts you, you don’t stay the same. You shrink. You dim. You start apologizing for your dreams. You make yourself smaller just to avoid conflict.
After a point, you stop blaming them. You start blaming yourself for staying. That’s where the love starts dying. Because no one can grow in a place where they are expected to remain the same every day. And sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is to step back, breathe, and let both souls grow the way they were meant to.

People think moving on requires clarity. It doesn’t. Most of us leave when staying becomes more painful than being lost. You won’t know the next step. You won’t know what the future looks like. You won’t suddenly feel strong. You will feel confused, scared, guilty, alone. But you will also feel one thing you haven’t felt in a long time: yourself. And that feeling, even if small, is enough to start over.
Freedom is not a promise of perfect choices. It does not mean you will always walk the right path or avoid pain. You may take wrong turns. You may trust the wrong people. You may fall, break, wander, repeat. But in that wandering, you will learn who you are without someone else’s fear shaping you. And slowly, all your mistakes become signboards. Every detour becomes direction. Every heartbreak becomes a quiet map back home. Because the soul always knows the way back to itself.

The Gita does not ask you to be fearless. It asks you to be honest. Honest about what hurts you. Honest about what restricts you. Honest about what your heart can no longer carry. When you stop lying to yourself, you stop lying to life. You will make mistakes after leaving. You will miss them. You will question your decision. But your soul has its own way of guiding you back. Not back to a person, but back to a life where you can breathe, grow, expand. Every broken road still leads somewhere honest. We are not built to be controlled. We are built to evolve. And anything, even love, that blocks that evolution will eventually turn into anger. Not because the love was fake. But because the freedom was missing.
A relationship that costs you your freedom will cost you your peace next. And anything that steals your peace will eventually steal your love too.