When Heaven Forbids the Heart: The Quiet Courage of Letting Go | by Patricia Joy | Oct, 2025

We met in college — two souls trying to find meaning in a world that often felt too loud, too demanding, too uncertain. We were friends before we were anything else; we had a similar sense of humor, music preferences, and a subdued appreciation for the small things in life — like a quiet laughter over coffee, sunsets, and meaningful conversations. It was the sort of relationship that seemed almost predestined.

And perhaps that is why falling in love was so simple.

Over time, our relationship blossomed into something more. It just happened; it wasn’t loud or dramatic. We started holding hands with hearts full rather than empty ones, and envisioning a future that felt both terrifying and beautiful.

But as our love deepened, so did the cracks that faith began to reveal.

You see, I am a Catholic.
He is a Jehovah’s Witness.

I didn’t believe it mattered at first. After all, love is meant to overcome everything, including uncertainty, barriers and differences. And maybe, in a perfect world, it could. But faith is not just belief — it’s identity. It shapes how we see life, purpose, and even eternity. However, I soon learned that for him, loving me came with a cost.

He started to worry — what if people found out? What if the elders in his congregation knew? He could lose his privileges, his standing, his place in the world he’s always known.

And slowly, love began to feel like a secret. Something we had to protect not from the world, but from his world.

I remember the night we decided to end it. There were no fights, no bitterness, just the quiet ache of two people realizing that love, sometimes, is not enough to bridge the sacred boundaries of faith. We sat in silence, holding each other one last time, as if memorizing the moment before it disappeared into memory.

I’ve asked myself many times since then,
“Should religion be a barrier to love?”

Maybe not always. But in our case — yes, it was.

Not because faith itself is wrong, but because devotion can sometimes demand sacrifice — even of the heart. Religion can give people purpose and community, but it can also draw invisible lines between “us” and “them.” For him, crossing that line meant losing everything he’d known. For me, staying behind it meant losing him.

As time has softened the pain, but it hasn’t erased it. I still think about him sometimes — how two people so right for each other could still end up being wrong in the eyes of belief.

But I’ve learned that love doesn’t always mean forever. Sometimes it just means enough — enough to teach you what real connection feels like, enough to remind you that love can exist even where it can’t survive.

Religion may have drawn the boundary between us, but love… love will always be the part of the story that no doctrine could erase.