WHEN YOU REALISE YOU ARE NOT LEAVING A ROMANCE, BUT A HOSTAGE SITUATION⛓️
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME IN LOVE
The Unnamed Grief
Suppose I had a Euro for every coaching session that circled — eventually, inevitably — back to love. In that case, I’d probably have enough to fund a quiet retreat on an island where no one ever ghosts, gaslights, or leaves WhatsApp messages unread.
Over the years, I’ve worked with people from all walks of life, and if there's one thing that unites us more than taxes and toothaches, it's the deep human ache for connection. Nothing preoccupies us quite like love — except maybe money (but that’s a different blog post for another anxious Friday).
What always struck me, though, was this: no one is immune. Men and women alike, regardless of age, background, or relationship status, find themselves entangled in love stories that start out intoxicating and end up feeling more like emotional puzzles… or sometimes prisons.
“Why do I still love them when it hurts?”
“Why do I feel crazy for needing more?”
“Why can’t I walk away?”
I’ve heard these questions many times — and for full disclosure, I’ve lived them, too.
Because while I speak as a coach, I also write as a woman who has known the deep disorientation of loving someone who didn’t show up—not in the way I needed, not with the kind of presence that nourishes rather than confuses.
There is a unique grief that arises when you realise you’re not actually leaving a romance — you’re rather walking away from a hostage situation you mistook for intimacy. A dynamic where affection was real but conditional, communication was poetic but infrequent, and the love you received seemed to hinge on how little you asked for in return.
This is not about blaming, bashing, or dissecting red flags under a microscope.
It’s more about the quiet, painful truth of emotional captivity — and the slow, soul-deep awakening that comes when you finally begin to name it and speak up.
Whether you're a man or a woman — if this resonates, please know:
You're not dramatic.
You're not needy.
You're not weak.
You're probably just beginning to wake up.
The Slow Burn of Emotional Captivity
It doesn’t begin with chains. It usually begins with charm. Intensity. Connection. The kind that makes your skin remember and your mind forget. You don’t even notice the cage because it’s decorated with your favourite memories.
But over time, things shift. Your needs become "too much." Your questions, intrusive. Your feelings, inconvenient. The person who once leaned in now pulls away — but never quite leaves. Instead, they hover. They breadcrumb. They throw just enough attention your way to keep you anchored.
You tell yourself they’re just busy. That they love you in their own way. That if you just hold on, things will shift. That if you love them hard enough, they’ll wake up. You always find ways to justify their behaviour.
And while you wait, you start shrinking.
You monitor your words. Your needs. Your reactions. You try to be easier, lighter, quieter. You stop asking for more — because asking invites withdrawal. Silence. Or worse, passive punishment dressed as distance.
This is not romance. This is emotional Stockholm Syndrome.
What Stockholm Syndrome Looks Like in Love
We usually associate Stockholm Syndrome with crime documentaries — victims bonding with their captors, defending the very people who hold them hostage. It sounds extreme, until you're the one stuck in a relationship where love is used like a leash — tugged just enough to keep you near, then slackened to let you wander in anxiety and self-blame. The human psyche clings to connection, even if it’s harmful. Because uncertainty is more terrifying than dysfunction. In love, it looks like this: you justify their neglect. You explain away their absences. You celebrate crumbs as feasts. You mourn their bad moods as if you caused them. And you stay.
This kind of emotional captivity doesn’t involve bars or locked doors.
It comes wrapped in poetic messages, unfinished sentences, delayed replies, and vague promises.
You’re never quite sure where you stand — only that you’re not standing beside them.
What makes it so brutal is the ambiguity. There’s no fight, no clear betrayal, no final goodbye. Just a slow erosion of your self-worth, as you try to decode mixed signals and silence into something you can survive.
Stockholm Syndrome in love looks like:
Feeling relieved when they’re kind, even if it follows a week of silence.
Censoring your needs, afraid that being honest might “scare them off.”
Convincing yourself that they're just going through something, they don’t mean to be distant, or you’re just being too sensitive again, or too much.
Turning yourself inside out to avoid upsetting them, while they barely notice, or don’t care when you’re falling apart.
It’s the kind of pain that doesn’t scream — it lingers.
A quiet, gnawing ache as you hope they’ll reach out, explain, come closer — even though every time they do, it’s on their terms and their timing, and always just enough to keep you emotionally tethered.
And still, you stay.
Why?
Because you remember who they were in the beginning.
Because you’ve tasted the version of them that can be present — the one who said the right things, made you feel seen, and promised more.
You fell in love with their potential, and now you’re hooked on the hope that it might return.
But what you are actually doing is surviving in a cycle of intermittent reinforcement — the same pattern used in addiction psychology and slot machines.
You never know when the next “win” is coming. So you keep pulling the handle, losing more of yourself each time.
This is the true psychological cruelty of loving someone emotionally unavailable:
They rarely say no. That would give you clarity.
They rarely say yes. That would require commitment.
Instead, they say maybe, in a hundred different ways — and they leave you hanging in the emotional purgatory of “not quite.”
It’s hard to admit that the person you love might be the one hurting you most, not by accident or even cruelty, but by habit. That’s what makes it feel like a hostage situation:
You don’t know how to leave, and they have no real intention of letting you go.
You begin to confuse anxiety with chemistry, inconsistency with depth, longing with love. And slowly but surely, you disappear. You forget what it felt like to be met, not managed.
Until one day, something inside you whispers:
“This isn’t love. This is captivity with a pretty face.”
And that whisper—painful as it is—is where freedom begins.
The Subtle Signs It Was Never A Real Partnership
It doesn’t start out feeling unbalanced.
In fact, in the beginning, it probably felt magical. The chemistry was undeniable, the connection intense, the words poetic — like someone finally saw you. They didn’t just walk into your life; they flooded it with attention, charm, and possibility.
But slowly, ever so slowly, you barely noticed — something shifted.
They became vague.
You became anxious.
They needed space.
You filled the space with overthinking.
They responded when they felt like it.
You responded always, just in case they stopped altogether.
And yet… You kept calling it love. Because it still looked like love sometimes.
But here’s the hard truth: what you were in wasn’t a partnership. It was a dynamic, a dance, a loop — one where you led with vulnerability, and they led with just enough engagement to keep the lights dimly on.
Real partnership feels like presence.
This felt like a performance.
You were working overtime to maintain the illusion of something that only survived because you refused to stop hoping.
Some subtle signs that it wasn’t mutual can be:
You kept lowering your expectations — not out of maturity, but out of survival.
You celebrated their minimal effort because it felt like proof they still cared.
You did all the emotional labor, including interpreting, guessing, softening, and forgiving — often without any acknowledgment.
You rarely felt safe asking questions, because asking meant risking the dreaded withdrawal or stonewalling.
You walked on eggshells, trying to “keep the peace” when, in truth, there was no real peace — just your silence in place of their absence.
And here’s what’s especially brutal:
They didn’t necessarily reject you.
They just never truly chose you, not with consistency, not with action, not with intention.
So you told yourself stories:
“They’re just scared.”
“They’re emotionally blocked.”
“They’ve been through so much.”
And maybe all of that is true.
But it still doesn’t excuse how you were left emotionally starving while trying to feed the entire relationship from your side.
Partnership is a place of mutual effort, not endurance.
But you were enduring — and calling it love.
You kept trying to build a home with someone who was only willing to drop by.
And the longer you stayed, the more you convinced yourself that this must be love, because why else would you feel so much?
But feeling deeply is not the same as being met deeply.
And love that makes you disappear is not love. It’s loneliness with a romantic soundtrack.
Why You Stayed So Long
People on the outside might wonder, “Why didn’t you just leave?”
But the people on the inside, the ones who’ve lived it, know that leaving isn’t about willpower. It’s about unlearning an entire emotional logic system that kept you hooked.
Because you didn’t stay out of weakness.
You stayed because you’re loyal. Hopeful. Empathic.
You stayed because you fell in love not just with the person, but with the potential of who they could be — and maybe were, in fleeting, beautiful, and memorable moments.
You saw their wounds.
You understood their struggles.
You gave them space, patience, forgiveness, and softness.
And in a way, it even felt noble, spiritual to keep holding the torch, waiting for them to be ready. To grow. To choose you. To show up for you.
You stayed because they made you believe — maybe not overtly, but subtly — that needing more made you the problem. That if only you could love better, wait longer, require less, everything would fall into place.
You stayed because walking away felt like failure, or a part of you would be torn to pieces.
And love—real love, right? — It is supposed to be hard. Isn’t that what we’re taught?
To endure. To understand. To fight for it. That love hurts!
You stayed because sometimes, they were wonderful. The way they smiled at you. The way they once held your hand. The one message that made you cry. The playlist. The long talks. The quiet way they once said your name.
You held those crumbs in your heart like a feast — because when you’re starving, even crumbs taste like nourishment.
But mostly?
You stayed because you kept abandoning yourself to keep the relationship alive.
And each time you did, you lost a little more of your voice. Your radiance. Your trust in your own needs.
Until eventually, the ache of staying became greater than the fear of leaving.
And you were left with a question so sharp, it felt like it sliced through your heart and soul:
What else do they have to do to make you run?
Not in anger.
Not in drama.
But in truth, because your heart finally understands:
This isn’t love anymore. This is a sacrifice disguised as devotion.
And that realisation is both devastating and divine.
Because it means you are finally turning toward yourself, not because you’ve stopped loving them, but because you’re beginning to love yourself more.
Trying to Make Sense of What Doesn’t Add Up
Sometimes, what confuses us most isn't just the dynamic we're in — it's the ones surrounding it. We find ourselves comparing values, expectations, and boundaries, only to realise the playing field was never level to begin with.
There are relationships that continue, despite betrayals or silence, despite everything that would break someone else. And from the outside, it can feel like you're the only one who seems to be unraveling — the only one who still believes that truth matters, that respect matters, that promises should mean something.
You start to wonder if you're missing something fundamental. Are you too sensitive? Too principled? Too unwilling to accept reality?
But the truth is, there's nothing wrong with expecting loyalty. With wanting clarity. With needing more than breadcrumbs from someone who once offered a feast.
Trying to understand the logic of someone else's relationship — especially one that defies your own values — is a losing game. You're not meant to make peace with dynamics that run on silence, denial, or performative normalcy.
What you can do is return to your own truth.
Because sometimes the greatest act of love is no longer asking someone else to see you, but choosing to see yourself.
The Moment You Wake Up
It rarely arrives as a thunderclap.
It doesn’t happen the moment they disappoint you — or even the hundredth or umpteenth time.
No, the moment you wake up usually comes softly, quietly… perhaps after another long, aching silence. After a message left unread. After yet another time, you hold back your truth just to keep them comfortable.
And suddenly, something inside you says:
No more. It is too much.
Not in rage. Not even in heartbreak. But with a tired, sacred kind of clarity.
The kind that comes from grieving someone who is still alive, and realising that the love you’ve been fighting for… just isn’t fighting back.
You look at the pattern, not just the person.
And you see it for what it is:
Inconsistency dressed as mystery.
Avoidance sold as independence.
Emotional withholding repackaged as “needing space.”
You start to recognise that you haven’t actually been loved — you’ve been tolerated when convenient, idealised when useful, and ignored when honest.
And in that moment, it’s not your love that breaks.
It’s your illusion of what it was.
That’s when the anger arrives. The quiet kind. The kind that says:
“How did I let this go on so long?”
“How did I shrink myself for someone who didn’t even notice?”
“How many parts of me went quiet just to keep their version of peace?”
It’s not just pain. It’s rage. But not the destructive kind — the cleansing kind. The kind that fuels change.
And then comes grief. Not just for them — but for the version of you who gave and waited and hoped and twisted yourself into someone more "palatable," more "patient," more "understanding."
But underneath all that?
Relief.
Because once you wake up, even if you still love them deeply, you can no longer unsee the truth.
You can’t pretend that crumbs are a feast.
You cannot keep handing over your softness and love to someone who weaponises silence.
And that’s where healing begins, not with forgetting, not with hating, but
with choosing, day by day, to come home to yourself.
Breaking Free – The Emotional Detox
They don’t tell you that leaving someone you still love feels like peeling off your own skin.
Not because the relationship was healthy, but because your entire nervous system became conditioned to believe that this was home.
Letting go doesn’t feel like freedom at first. It feels like withdrawal.
Because that’s exactly what it is. Painful and devastating. Something you feel you can never recover from.
You’re not just detaching from a person.
You’re detaching from the hope that they will change.
From the fantasy version of the relationship, you worked so hard to sustain.
From the idea that if you had just loved better, waited longer, needed less… they might have finally seen you, would have chosen you, and showed up for you.
You may still long for a message. You may still check your phone. You may still feel a gut punch when their name doesn’t appear, and even more of one when it does.
That’s normal. That’s grief trying to negotiate with your clarity.
This stage is so brutal and painful because the body doesn’t know the difference between addiction to pain and devotion to a person.
It just knows you’re suddenly without your fix — the push-pull, the emotional rollercoaster, the anticipation of connection that never quite comes but always might.
But this is also where power starts to return — not all at once, but moment by moment.
You stop responding to breadcrumbs.
You start naming the behaviour, not just the emotion.
You stop making excuses for their silence.
You start saying things like,
“I deserve reciprocity.”
“This isn’t love if I’m the only one holding it.”
And the most important thing: you stop trying to get closure from the person who broke you.
Because you realise:
They can’t give you closure.
If they had the capacity to give you what you needed, you wouldn’t be hurting in the first place.
Breaking free isn’t a switch — it’s a practice.
Some days you’ll feel empowered. Other days, gutted.
You might still cry for them, but now, you don’t beg.
You might still miss them, but now, you don’t shrink.
And slowly, piece by piece, you start remembering what it felt like to belong to yourself.
The Aftermath – Grief, Guilt, and Liberation
After the detachment, after the silence, after the decision to finally not go back, what’s left is… strangely quiet.
Not peaceful. Not yet.
But quieter.
Like the sound of the sea after a storm: wreckage still visible, but the wind has changed.
And then it comes — often in waves, and sometimes all at once:
Grief for what never became.
Guilt for how long you stayed.
Liberation for the space you didn’t even realise you needed.
The grief feels strange because you’re mourning a person who was sometimes wonderful, but mostly unavailable. You are grieving the future you built in your head — the one where they finally see you, choose you, and truly be there for you.
And grief can be sneaky. You’ll find it in the most unexpected places:
A song that used to mean something.
The way your phone still knows how to autocorrect their name.
The moment you instinctively go to share something… and remember there’s no one on the other end of that thread anymore.
The guilt?
It’s for betraying yourself so many times.
For the nights you knew better, but stayed anyway.
For the messages you reread, the excuses you made, the versions of yourself you abandoned to keep the peace.
You’ll ask yourself:
How could I have let this happen?
Why didn’t I walk away sooner?
And the answer — if you’re willing to receive it with kindness — is this:
Because you love deeply.
Because you hope endlessly.
Because you saw something real, even if it was only ever a fragment of truth wrapped in fantasy.
But beneath the grief, under the guilt, somewhere deeper than the ache, liberation is blooming.
It’s subtle at first:
A full night’s sleep.
A quiet morning without waiting.
A moment of laughter that surprises you.
A return to something you used to love, without needing anyone else to validate it.
And one day, without fanfare, you’ll realise:
You’re not waiting anymore.
Not for the message. Not for the apology. Not for the version of them that never quite arrived.
You’re not healed—not yet. But you’re free.
And that’s where healing begins.
From Hostage to Whole
Leaving someone you love is never easy.
Leaving someone who made you forget yourself in the process?
That’s a full resurrection.
Because you weren’t just letting go of a relationship.
You were reclaiming your voice, your light, your wholeness.
You see now that love, real love, doesn’t keep you guessing.
It doesn’t punish you with silence.
It doesn’t ask you to perform stillness in the face of emotional starvation.
Real love meets you. Holds you.
It doesn’t require you to disappear in order to stay.
If what you had demanded was constant self-erasure, it was not love.
If your emotional safety was always optional, it was not love.
If you felt more like a caretaker than a partner, it was not love.
And calling it what it was — a hostage situation dressed up in occasional poetry — doesn’t make you cynical.
It makes you free.
You may still love them. That’s allowed.
But now you love yourself more.
And that changes everything.
You’ve stopped begging.
You’ve stopped waiting.
You’ve stopped hoping they’ll finally become who they were in the beginning.
And you’ve started doing something far more powerful:
Becoming the person who doesn’t need to be rescued.
Because you were never too much.
You were just asking to be loved in full.
And you will be. But not by someone who only knows how to keep you hungry.
So if you’re walking out of your own emotional captivity right now — shaky, raw, half in grief and half in awe — I want you to know:
You’re not alone.
You’re not broken.
And this is not the end of your love story.
It’s just the first chapter you wrote in your own handwriting.
From hostage to whole.
And from here?
You rise.
🎶My Song for you
“Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye – captures the disbelief and detachment after emotional disconnection. It has that haunting, reflective quality that echoes the quiet unraveling…
For more good music, go to this Spotify playlist where you can find all the songs from the Change & Evolve Letters!
📚My Poem for you
Is by Sara Teasdale (1884—1933)
I Am Not Yours
I am not yours, not lost in you, Not lost, although I long to be Lost as a candle lit at noon, Lost as a snowflake in the sea. You love me, and I find you still A spirit beautiful and bright, Yet I am I, who long to be Lost as a light is lost in light. Oh plunge me deep in love—put out My senses, leave me deaf and blind, Swept by the tempest of your love, A taper in a rushing wind.
👀Impression
As I will be taking a bit of a break from writing, I had to leave you with a beautiful impression of Lake Starnberg - of course!
Have you ever felt like a hostage in a relationship?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments, leave a ❤️ or send me a message. I always love hearing from you.
Wishing you a peaceful weekend wherever you are.
Yours
Tanja 🤗
PS. You can now also find my podcast on Spotify
Change & Evolve and feel free to get in touch
