Style vs instructor

Nope, you have no obligation, legal or otherwise, to stay where you are. Go and do whatever you want. Go join another school. Be happy. Explore. Life is too short. I don't even know how old you are, but I can tell you that when you get to be a certain age, attending college, having relationships, starting a family, starting a career, etc. takes over your life, and martial arts often gets put on the back-burner. So do what you need to do, and do it quick.

My wife did a lot of hopping around to different martial arts schools. When I first met her, she was doing Shaolin-Do. After a while sharing with her my observations about her school's style and after asking her what she was really interested in, it occurred to both of us that she was in the wrong school and the wrong style. That's when she got out of there and went to another school.

Her new school was much more in line with what she wanted out of martial arts. And she was happy. But after a while, she realized that this new instructor could only take her so far in the types of things she really wanted. The school did a mix of mostly traditional Shaolin kung-fu with some contemporary Wushu, and she wanted to only do contemporary wushu. So after a good amount of searching, she eventually left that school and went to another one.

She also went through some of the guilt that you're experiencing. But she overcame it by realizing that she was in it for herself, her time was limited, and eventually she was going to be too old or have too little time to devote to it. So she needed to put her guilt aside and move on for her own good.

And so it went. She went to another school, and once again she maxed out what she could learn with this new instructor. Eventually she started taking lessons from very high level instructors, but she needed to travel for that. After a while, the time came that she realized she couldn't devote the time needed to get any better, so she stopped training altogether. She was happy with what she had achieved, though.

The point of my story is this: Know what you want out of martial arts and take active steps to achieve it. If your current path doesn't allow you to do what you want, change. Because, life is short.

You feel guilty and disloyal. You feel like you have an obligation to stay. That's all normal, but don't let yourself be trapped by those emotions. Your instructor is going to be just fine without you. The school will go on. Someone else will take your place. Your instructor won't be upset that you're leaving. She'll almost certainly even let you come back if you ever wanted to in the future. It's no big deal. You can even talk with her about it ahead of time. Tell her what you're interested in, and she might even encourage you to go to that other school. Heck, she might even know of a better option for you.

Good luck!