Why Do You Believe The Absence Of Love Is The Only Love You Deserve?
Riya Kumari | May 26, 2026, 05:30 IST
Gita
Image credit : AI
There are people who do not chase love. They wait for it quietly, almost apologetically, as if asking for too much would make it disappear. And after a while, absence starts feeling more trustworthy than affection. Not because they do not want love. But because every time it came close, it left before they could believe it was real. So they learn strange habits. They become easy to lose. Somewhere along the way, they begin treating loneliness not as pain, but as proof of who they are.
There is a particular kind of person who learns, very young, that love is a room they are allowed to stand near but never inside. They press their ear to the door. They memorize the voices. They learn the rhythm of other people's belonging the way some children learn lullabies = secondhand, through the wall. This is not about being unloved. That would be simpler. This is about being someone who has confused the absence of love with its truest form, who has come to believe that the quiet after everyone leaves is the only honest sound in the world.
The One Who Runs Before Being Left
![Are you free or scared?]()
Bhagavad Gita 2.62 - 63
“From attachment comes desire, from desire comes anger, from anger comes delusion, from delusion comes loss of memory, and from loss of memory comes destruction of wisdom.”
This reflects the cycle of fear, attachment, and self-destruction, leaving before being left, because the mind no longer trusts peace.
You leave first. Not always with your body - sometimes only with your eyes, your attention, the small inward turning that the other person feels but cannot name. You leave when things begin to go right. You leave at the exact moment another person would have started to stay. You tell yourself it is instinct. It is older than that. Somewhere along the way you decided that good things were a mistake the universe would eventually correct, and you wanted to be the one to correct it first.
To be the leaver, not the left. To choose the wound rather than wait for it. So you run. And the worst part is not the running. The worst part is the small, terrible relief you feel as the door closes behind you, the relief of returning to a grief you understand.
The One Who Stays By the Door
![Free yet don't know where to fly]()
Bhagavad Gita 6.5
“One must elevate oneself by one’s own mind, not degrade oneself. The mind alone is the friend of the self, and the mind alone is the enemy.”
This mirrors the silent waiting, the inability to ask, the habit of shrinking oneself until even pain becomes wordless.
And yet, you do not fully go. This is the contradiction no one writes about. You leave, but you stay by the door. You stand in the hallway of someone's life, listening to them breathe through the wood, hoping that one day they will open it without you having to knock. They never do. Not because they are cruel. Because they cannot hear you. You have made yourself so quiet, so unaskable, so determined not to be a burden, that you have rendered yourself inaudible to the very people you wanted to be heard by.
You watch them not check on you. You watch the days pass. You let your name slip off their tongue without correcting them. You are sand running through sand, and the cruelty is not that they let you go - it is that you never gave them anything to hold.
The One Who Has Tasted Too Much Leaving
![Disappearing slowly]()
Bhagavad Gita 2.14
“Happiness and distress come and go like seasons. They arise from sense perception, and one must learn to endure them without being disturbed.”
A person abandoned too many times begins treating loss like weather, something expected, endured, normalized.
Abandonment, after enough repetition, stops feeling like a wound and starts feeling like weather. You stop flinching. You stop expecting otherwise. When someone walks out, you nod the way you might nod at rain. The danger is not the leaving anymore. The danger is the staying. When someone arrives and does not go - when someone sits with you long enough to actually see you - your whole body does not know what to do.
You mistake their patience for a trick. You wait for the catch. You hand them reasons to leave, small ones at first, to test whether they will use them. Most do. Some don't. And the ones who don't are the ones who frighten you most, because they ask you to believe in something your whole life has trained you to disbelieve.
The One Who Carries Everyone and Asks for No One
![Heavy heart]()
Bhagavad Gita 12.13 - 14
“One who is compassionate, free from possessiveness and ego, equal in happiness and distress, and forgiving such a devotee is dear to Me.”
This reflects the person who keeps carrying others quietly, loving deeply, even while their own heart remains unseen.
People put things on you. Their moods, their unspoken needs, the version of you that is most useful to them. You let them. You have made an art of being whatever the room requires. It costs you almost nothing, you tell yourself, because there is so little of you left to spend. But there is a moment, usually late, usually alone, when your heart gets heavy and you realize you have built a life in which there is no one you can ask to carry it.
The tear falls. No one sees. The road is long. You walk it the way you have always walked it - alone, and pretending the aloneness was your choice. You begin shrinking into whatever shape causes the least disappointment. But inside, there is still a very human longing. Because the truth is, people like this do not fear love. They fear the grief that follows when love disappears again. So they make a home out of absence. They call distance peace. They pretend they need less than they do. But when everything is quiet enough to hear the truth clearly, they still ache for the simplest thing in the world: Someone who stays.
The One Who Runs Before Being Left
Are you free or scared?
Image credit : Pexels
Bhagavad Gita 2.62 - 63
“From attachment comes desire, from desire comes anger, from anger comes delusion, from delusion comes loss of memory, and from loss of memory comes destruction of wisdom.”
This reflects the cycle of fear, attachment, and self-destruction, leaving before being left, because the mind no longer trusts peace.
You leave first. Not always with your body - sometimes only with your eyes, your attention, the small inward turning that the other person feels but cannot name. You leave when things begin to go right. You leave at the exact moment another person would have started to stay. You tell yourself it is instinct. It is older than that. Somewhere along the way you decided that good things were a mistake the universe would eventually correct, and you wanted to be the one to correct it first.
To be the leaver, not the left. To choose the wound rather than wait for it. So you run. And the worst part is not the running. The worst part is the small, terrible relief you feel as the door closes behind you, the relief of returning to a grief you understand.
The One Who Stays By the Door
Free yet don't know where to fly
Image credit : Pexels
Bhagavad Gita 6.5
“One must elevate oneself by one’s own mind, not degrade oneself. The mind alone is the friend of the self, and the mind alone is the enemy.”
This mirrors the silent waiting, the inability to ask, the habit of shrinking oneself until even pain becomes wordless.
And yet, you do not fully go. This is the contradiction no one writes about. You leave, but you stay by the door. You stand in the hallway of someone's life, listening to them breathe through the wood, hoping that one day they will open it without you having to knock. They never do. Not because they are cruel. Because they cannot hear you. You have made yourself so quiet, so unaskable, so determined not to be a burden, that you have rendered yourself inaudible to the very people you wanted to be heard by.
You watch them not check on you. You watch the days pass. You let your name slip off their tongue without correcting them. You are sand running through sand, and the cruelty is not that they let you go - it is that you never gave them anything to hold.
The One Who Has Tasted Too Much Leaving
Disappearing slowly
Image credit : Pexels
Bhagavad Gita 2.14
“Happiness and distress come and go like seasons. They arise from sense perception, and one must learn to endure them without being disturbed.”
A person abandoned too many times begins treating loss like weather, something expected, endured, normalized.
Abandonment, after enough repetition, stops feeling like a wound and starts feeling like weather. You stop flinching. You stop expecting otherwise. When someone walks out, you nod the way you might nod at rain. The danger is not the leaving anymore. The danger is the staying. When someone arrives and does not go - when someone sits with you long enough to actually see you - your whole body does not know what to do.
You mistake their patience for a trick. You wait for the catch. You hand them reasons to leave, small ones at first, to test whether they will use them. Most do. Some don't. And the ones who don't are the ones who frighten you most, because they ask you to believe in something your whole life has trained you to disbelieve.
The One Who Carries Everyone and Asks for No One
Heavy heart
Image credit : Pexels
Bhagavad Gita 12.13 - 14
“One who is compassionate, free from possessiveness and ego, equal in happiness and distress, and forgiving such a devotee is dear to Me.”
This reflects the person who keeps carrying others quietly, loving deeply, even while their own heart remains unseen.
People put things on you. Their moods, their unspoken needs, the version of you that is most useful to them. You let them. You have made an art of being whatever the room requires. It costs you almost nothing, you tell yourself, because there is so little of you left to spend. But there is a moment, usually late, usually alone, when your heart gets heavy and you realize you have built a life in which there is no one you can ask to carry it.
The tear falls. No one sees. The road is long. You walk it the way you have always walked it - alone, and pretending the aloneness was your choice. You begin shrinking into whatever shape causes the least disappointment. But inside, there is still a very human longing. Because the truth is, people like this do not fear love. They fear the grief that follows when love disappears again. So they make a home out of absence. They call distance peace. They pretend they need less than they do. But when everything is quiet enough to hear the truth clearly, they still ache for the simplest thing in the world: Someone who stays.