To those who were once believers and are now atheists, some advice?

[thesummerqueen]

So, I just wanted to ask you all, if you experienced anything similar, with loved ones, significant others, and/or friends, and how did you handle it? Did your friendships/relationships ever recover?

Honestly, no one ever blamed my atheism for a friendship ending. It just happened that the more I embraced being "out" in many contexts, the more I was also digging into skepticism and humanism and 'growing up,' and I began to lose contact with people who didn't think like I did. Min makes this sound like a bad thing, but really...would you want the friend who was all about guns and Jesus to hold on to you? I wouldn't have anything in common with those people.

The friends I 'lost' were the sort who post eagle and flag montages and shout "MURICA!" at every turn and praise god at the slightest blessing and generally act irrationally. At the time, I ranged between sadness because I thought they were great friends, and anger because they were being so frustrating. In the end, I realized the old dusty adage of "one door closes, another opens" was true. I really like the friends who have taken their place. It's not that they think completely like me - it's that they embrace rationalism, which means that the relationship can survive even if we disagree.