A friend of mine once told me something that stayed with me for days. She is a government officer, financially independent, married, a mother. And yet, when we meet, she still lies about where she is going — "there's a function," "there's a programme" — exactly the way she lied to her parents when we were teenagers. When I asked her why she was still afraid, she gave me an answer I have never forgotten: "I am employed. I am not independent."

That one sentence cracked something open for me, because it explains a pattern I see again and again, in men and women alike. We confuse escape with a solution.

The shape of escape

Think back to her story. In school and college, she lied to her parents just to sit at the juice shop outside our gates and chat with us. We weren't doing anything dramatic — we were children outside a college eating chaat. The lie wasn't about the act. It was about needing to get out of a space that felt suffocating.

Then she got a good job and started earning, and we assumed she was free. She wasn't. The lies continued, only the audience changed. When her marriage was being arranged, her thinking was simple and heartbreaking: "I can marry anyone, at least I'll be out of this house." So she married in a hurry. And the situation didn't dissolve — it relocated. New house, same fear, same hiding.

This is what escapism actually does. It changes the address of the problem without changing the problem.

It is not about men or women

I want to be very clear that this isn't a story about controlling parents or controlling husbands. I have met just as many men living the exact same way — denied permission at home, so they rush into marriage, only to find a partner whose mood collapses the moment they make an independent plan. The roles flip, the dynamic stays identical. The common thread isn't gender. It's the instinct to leave the room rather than fix what is happening inside it.

What the body reveals about the running

People who are in escape mode rarely say it out loud, but their bodies leak it. Watch for the small tells:

  • A restless readiness to leave — feet or body angled toward the door, weight shifting, the chair pushed back before the conversation is even over.
  • Self-soothing gestures when the difficult topic comes up — rubbing the neck, pressing the lips together, fidgeting with a phone or a ring.
  • A bright, over-rehearsed cover story delivered too quickly, because a practised lie comes out smoother than the truth.
  • Relief, not resolution, on the face after a decision — the loosened shoulders of someone who got away rather than the steadiness of someone who solved something.

None of these prove a person is lying or unhappy on their own. Read in clusters, though, they point to a body that is rehearsing exits instead of staying with discomfort.

The question that actually helps

So before you leave a situation — a job, a relationship, a home, a city — pause and ask yourself one honest question: am I solving this, or am I simply changing the scenery? Because if you are only running, you will almost certainly arrive somewhere that smells exactly like the place you left. The faces will be new. The fear will be familiar.

Escape feels like the only door. It usually isn't. It's the door that puts the same room on the other side. Real freedom is quieter and slower — it's staying long enough to name what is wrong and address it, so that the next chapter isn't just a fresh location for an old cage.