Leaving a group that makes you smaller isn’t disloyal. It’s loyalty to who you’re trying to become.

Some groups hold on to you by making the parts of you they cannot use feel embarrassing. It happens slowly and usually without meanness: a joke about your hobby, a look when you get excited, a sense that wanting things is a bit much around here. Leaving feels like betrayal partly because the shrinking was too gradual to point at.

List the things you have stopped mentioning around them. If the list runs long, you have your answer. You can go slowly and without an announcement, and you can be grateful for what the group was while still going.