Alone These Days

[Guest _mike]

Damnit man. I feel so alone. All my family (except one cousin) are Christians. All my real friends are Christians from my former church of attendance. I can't seem to connect with anyone else beside these people. Knowing that I am an atheist has somewhat weakened our relationships. My family and I don't speak as warmly and as often as we used to. My Christian friends are at church a lot of the time, and I don't speak or spend as much time with them as I used to. Basically, my social life has taken a huge plunge since I left the church I used to attend and became an atheist. You just have to understand that I was a regular church going religious freak. I would be at church a lot and it was fun being with everyone there and being a part of that large community (the church I used to go to is huge and there are a lot of people that go there). Now it's been a little under a year since I've last gone to that church. I feel isolated and alone. It's a crap feeling. I often wish I had never been so rational to discover Christianity was bogus. I know the solution is to find another social community and/or some new friends (and hey, maybe even make a new family of my own), but it's more difficult for me to do these things under my current circumstances. I live in a community that is mostly Christian. The majority of other people around my area are too wild for me. I can't really find new friends that are suitable for me. So I just stick around with the old click when I get a chance or spend my time with my family or am alone for a lot of the time. I'm lonely as hell and I don't know what to do. Currently, I'm applying for some in and out of state pharmacy schools, am working on my masters degree in biology, and am living at home. Any advice on how I can get out of this lonely, socially bumbed situation?

 

Sorry for being so jumpy in my writing...my thoughts are everywhere at the moment.

[junkpoet]

Damnit man. I feel so alone. All my family (except one cousin) are Christians. All my real friends are Christians from my former church of attendance. I can't seem to connect with anyone else beside these people. Knowing that I am an atheist has somewhat weakened our relationships. My family and I don't speak as warmly and as often as we used to. My Christian friends are at church a lot of the time, and I don't speak or spend as much time with them as I used to. Basically, my social life has taken a huge plunge since I left the church I used to attend and became an atheist. You just have to understand that I was a regular church going religious freak. I would be at church a lot and it was fun being with everyone there and being a part of that large community (the church I used to go to is huge and there are a lot of people that go there). Now it's been a little under a year since I've last gone to that church. I feel isolated and alone. It's a crap feeling. I often wish I had never been so rational to discover Christianity was bogus. I know the solution is to find another social community and/or some new friends (and hey, maybe even make a new family of my own), but it's more difficult for me to do these things under my current circumstances. I live in a community that is mostly Christian. The majority of other people around my area are too wild for me. I can't really find new friends that are suitable for me. So I just stick around with the old click when I get a chance or spend my time with my family or am alone for a lot of the time. I'm lonely as hell and I don't know what to do. Currently, I'm applying for some in and out of state pharmacy schools, am working on my masters degree in biology, and am living at home. Any advice on how I can get out of this lonely, socially bumbed situation?

 

Sorry for being so jumpy in my writing...my thoughts are everywhere at the moment.

 

i am in a similiar situation. except that i have a few freinds that are fellow sceptics. i still feel islolated and pretty lonesome at times. but what are you going to do? you cant really put what you know on a shelf and pretend you dont know it. im not even openly atheist to many in my extended family and friends network. i figure most of them assume i am still going to church somewhere.

 

are you open about your atheism then? you may be suprised to find others like yourself either in your circle of friends or at work/school or whatever. im not advocating evangelical atheism, but if the topic comes up, i would encourage you to be honest. you might find a fellow sceptic where you did not expect it. or you may just get yourself in to needless debate with closeminded people.

[pitchu]

Try going to one of those mega-bookstores and hanging out in the sections that are meaningful to you, then strike up a conversation with anyone looking through the same kinds of books you're looking through. Sometimes it brings surprisingly good results.

[Kirangel]

Not a bad idea pitchu.

 

It must be difficult. My friends and family don't concentrate on the religious aspects of life when we relate to each other. Although sometimes it gets brought up. I wish I could dish out some better advice, but I like the book store thing, maybe try the library. Or you could just go buy one of those "Beam me up scotty there's no intelligent life down here" t-shirts and just try to wait it out until you can move to a better area. You could just try what junkpoet says and maybe you'll get lucky, but it doesn't seem like telling people of your atheism was too well received.

[pandora]

It gets better. Go to more university-sponsored events or look for some freethinker/humanist/atheist groups in your area (if they exist). Try the philosophy or biology club at school (or maybe these are the people you say are too wild). I lost a lot of really good friends when I deconverted. I can relate to how you feel, but I've made a few new friends over the years. It's definitely much harder to find friends now, so I have more close online friends than I used to. And now that a CFI office has opened in Indy, I've met a lot more friends, although some of them are considerably older than me.

 

Good luck in pharmacy school! It's a tough program... you won't have a whole lot of time for friends anyway.

I completed all the coursework for the Pharm.D but quit before my rotations. See my profile for the sort of long version of the story. Pharmacy just wasn't a good fit for me as a profession... I found the actual job incredibly boring, but I loved the coursework. It was fascinating.

[Guest _mike]

It’s been a while now and I still can’t seem to get myself together. I’m so fucking depressed and lonely. I am basically living my life alone most of the time and it sucks ass. My former Christian friends have basically gradually dissociated from me, not intentionally I think, but just as a result of me no longer attending the church and all its activities and events. I’m so pissed at these people. Some friends. I can’t really find any opportunities to make new friends or join a new social group. The bookstore idea mentioned above just seems a bit weird to me. I’m not really that much of the socially aggressive type, so it’s harder for me to meet new people. What’s worse is that so few people in the area that I live are nonbelievers. Loneliness is a shitty emotion to go through. Wow. I hate writing shit like this. I’m not the complaining type but I really have no other outlet to express myself right now. This is just the way it is now. Any comfort, comments, ideas, etc. would be appreciated. You guys have been helpful in the past.

[R. S. Martin]

Have you googled for freethinker, atheist, or humanist groups in your area? Or other interest groups? You start on the national or international level and when you find an organization, you keep narrowing it down till you find a telephone number or email address in your area. A place to start might be on my website, if you don't know any others. It's in my sig. I think smellingcoffee carries yet another organization name in his sig.

[Mythra]

Have you googled for freethinker, atheist, or humanist groups in your area? Or other interest groups?

 

Yeah, Mike - what about hobbies or interests that are far removed from the whole god /no god scene? Seems like the logical place to start - finding people who have common interests. Even if you live in the heart of the bible belt - I guarantee that there are tons of people there who are too busy doing stuff to worry one way or the other about GOD.

 

If you don't have any interests where you can meet people - I'd advise you to take that energy you're wasting and put it into getting that Master's degree. That is an opportunity that will pay you dividends for the rest of your life. Put your social life on hold for a time and get yourself set up.

 

You won't be alone forever.

[4truth]

I deconverted 5 months ago and am in pretty much the same situation. The church was nearly my whole social network. I've met some people at the Unitarian-Universalist church who think about the same way I do. There are a lot of different activities there, and meeting people in a church was in my comfort zone since that's what I've always done. They have no doctrine, mostly are involved in social justice issues. The place I've gone to is about half atheist. It's definitely weird talking about atheism in church. It has its up and down sides, but may be worth a look if there's one in your area.

 

Grad school should help. It's easier to find rational people in an academic setting I think.

[upstarter]

I guess I'm lucky. I think it was the fact that I had lots of non-Christian friends that actually began my deconversion process. I'm sorry to hear you are lonely. You must have other interests besides religion. Why not pursue some of them. The people you meet might still be xtians in your area but you'll be gathering around something other than xtianity. And you don't have to tell everyone you meet that you're an athiest. It's not always relevant.

 

I'm not even sure about people's advice to find atheist organizations to hang with. You've spent your whole life defining yourself as an xtian, you don't now have to define yourself soley by your non-belief. You are a multifaceted person, as we all are. Start looking at yourself and seeing who you are apart from the whole faith question. Then pursue some of those things and you'll find new people.

 

For example, my husband and I are part of a community choir (non-faith-based) and we are very close to many people in the choir. Many of them are believers, they know we are not, but it's not why we are friends, so it rarely comes up.

 

There's more to you than the atheist part... embrace it.

 

Heather

[Amethyst]

I'm in a similar situation as well. Have a few friends who aren't religious, and a few who are liberal Christians. I still talk to my family but most of them are religious, so I don't really have much to talk about with them anymore. I'm in a Star Trek club, but I've been in it for 10 years. It's my church, lol. It's rather small though, less than 10 people. I take the occassional writing class.

 

Pitchu's idea is a good one. I should try it.

[SWIM]

Have you googled for freethinker, atheist, or humanist groups in your area? Or other interest groups?

 

Yeah, Mike - what about hobbies or interests that are far removed from the whole god /no god scene? Seems like the logical place to start - finding people who have common interests. Even if you live in the heart of the bible belt - I guarantee that there are tons of people there who are too busy doing stuff to worry one way or the other about GOD.

 

If you don't have any interests where you can meet people - I'd advise you to take that energy you're wasting and put it into getting that Master's degree. That is an opportunity that will pay you dividends for the rest of your life. Put your social life on hold for a time and get yourself set up.

 

You won't be alone forever.

 

 

 

 

 

Good point. I fly model helicoptors at my local AMA. Great fun, lots of friends, and we never once talked about religion.

 

But these are aquaintances more then friends. I know where he is coming from. I have NO FRIENDS who share my beliefs except here. Maybe that's why I post so much since finding this board. I have my own message boards too, but they are not religious. Discussing religion, or lack thereof is important imo, at least for true friendship.

 

It is hard to be friends with people that either pity you, or think you are going to hell. And some folks just *act* like they are your friends so you will let them in and *receive* their *gift*. Selfish really, and I am not interested in helping someone else earn god brownie points.

[scepticjoe]

Get a copy of all the clubs at the University you attend, and go to the meetings of all the clubs that interest you. You will probably find some dull, but in some you may gradually develop friends. Pull out a copy of your telephone book and look up "Clubs." There may be some that interest you. Do some web searches for clubs/groups that are in your area. Look up Unitarian/Universalist churches in your area. A lot of the members are agnostics and atheists. Give us some of your interests and what area you live in, and I bet I could find you some matches on the internet.

[Everglaze]

For me it was ironic, because when I was a Christian, I never had any Christian friends (just minor acquaintances). No one gave a fuck. But, I was surrounded by non-Christians all the time. Now that I'm no longer Christian, I feel lonelier than ever before because I'm not surrounded by non-Christians or people who share common similarities as I. Basically, when I graduated from college earlier this year, my social network collapsed. I'm the biggest loner/loser living on this side of the town. I've looked wherever I could and I haven't been able to find anything that's relevant to me ATM. I feel like I'm living outside of the glass. Everything feels depressing and frustrating when you're lonely. At least you have a better chance since you're attending University. I can definitely relate with your situation though.

[Dirac]

Loneliness is a shitty emotion to go through. Wow. I hate writing shit like this. I’m not the complaining type but I really have no other outlet to express myself right now. This is just the way it is now. Any comfort, comments, ideas, etc. would be appreciated.

Don't feel bad about it, dude, we can take it! Rough with the smooth and all that.

 

I am going through an identical situation. I left church a few years ago now, and I've never replaced the friendships I ahd there. I mean, I grew up with those people, all through my teenage years and early adulthood. You can't just magic up relationships of that depth and with that much shared experience behind them. The older I get, the harder I find it to make friends. Most people seem to stick, and understandably so, with their childhood friends and perhaps the good friends they made at university. All my friends were Christian! All my uni friends were Christian! So now I've left, I'm jsut screwed. It's hard too since I'm realyl rather shy, and unless someone is prepared to take the time to get to know me, I can't relax and 'be myself'. And given the society we live in, at least in the UK or US, where everyone is scared of each other, the task feels almost impossible!

 

Still, what can I do? Give up? For the moment it's just a case of grin and bear it, but the more that time goes on, the more hopeless inside I feel. I hate Christianity more than words will ever be able to describe, it's ruined my life.

 

I just SO wish I'd never gone to church, or at least not had a fear of non-Christians driven into me. What's that shitty passage in Jude, fear the sinner or some bullshit?

 

As a last random thought, I stumbled across this (I'm left-wing these days, no real surprise for an ex-C!):

 

Little by little, youth frees itself. It flings overboard its prejudices, and it begins to criticise. Thought reawakens, at first among the few: but insensibly the awakening reaches the majority. The impulse is given, the revolution follows.

 

And each time the question of morality comes up again. "Why should I follow the principles of this hypocritical morality?" asks the brain, released from religious terrors. "Why should any morality be obligatory?"

 

Then people try to account for the moral sentiment that they meet at every turn without having explained it to themselves. And they will never explain it so long as they believe it a privilege of human nature, so long as they do not descend to animals, plants and rocks to understand it. They seek the answer, however, in the science of the hour.

 

And, if we may venture to say so, the more the basis of conventional morality, or rather of the hypocrisy that fills its place is sapped, the more the moral plane of society is raised. It is above all at such times, precisely when folks are criticising and denying it, that moral sentiment makes the most progress. It is then that it grows, that it is raised and refined.

 

Years ago the youth of Russia were passionately agitated by this very question. "I will be immoral!" a young nihilist came and said to his friend, thus translating into action the thoughts that gave him no rest. "I will be immoral, and why should I not? Because the Bible wills it? But the Bible is only a collection of Babylonian and Hebrew traditions, traditions collected and put together like the Homeric poems, or as is being done still with Basque poems and Mongolian legends. Must I then go back to the state of mind of the half-civilised peoples of the East? [This last question could easily be misinterpreted as Orientalist! Kropotkin should be more careful how he phrases stuff!]

 

"Must I be moral because Kant tells me of a categoric imperative, of a mysterious command which comes to me from the depths of my own being and bids me be moral? But why should this `categoric imperative' exercise a greater authority over my actions than that other imperative, which at times may command me to get drunk. A word, nothing but a word, like the words `Providence,' or `Destiny,' invented to conceal our ignorance.

 

"Or perhaps I am to be moral to oblige Bentham, who wants me to believe that I shall be happier if I drown to save a passerby who has fallen into the river than if I watched him drown?

 

"Or perhaps because such has been my education? Because my mother taught me morality? Shall I then go and kneel down in a church, honour the Queen, bow before the judge I know for a scoundrel, simply because our mothers, our good ignorant mothers, have taught us such a pack of nonsense?

 

"I am prejudiced,--like everyone else. I will try to rid myself of prejudice! Even though immorality be distasteful, I will yet force myself to be immoral, as when I was a boy I forced myself to give up fearing the dark, the churchyard, ghosts and dead people--all of which I had been taught to fear.

 

"It will be immoral to snap a weapon abused by religion; I will do it, were it only to protect against the hypocrisy imposed on us in the name of a word to which the name morality has been given!"

 

Such was the way in which the youth of Russia reasoned when they broke with old-world prejudices, and unfurled this banner of nihilist or rather of anarchist philosophy: to bend the knee to no authority whatsoever, however respected; to accept no principle so long as it is unestablished by reason.

 

Need we add, that after pitching into the waste-paper basket the teachings of their fathers, and burning all systems of morality, the nihilist youth developed in their midst a nucleus of moral customs, infinitely superior to anything that their fathers had practised under the control of the "Gospel," of the "Conscience," of the "Categoric Imperative," or of the "Recognised Advantage" of the utilitarian.

That quote is from Anarchist Morality by Peter Kropotkin, and read it literally just now for the first time. It just reminded me of my own attitude to morality once I'd reached that point of actually saying, "You're not there!" to God's face. All those years you have it smacked into you to do stuff "because Jesus says so" or "because God commands so" or for "treasures in Heaven."

 

Of course now I've left church, I base my morality on helping people because I LOVE THEM!!! I have never done so much volunteering - AND ENJOYED IT!!

 

As for recommendations, I can only say to you (and myself) to not give up, keep trying, go along to groups etc. Meetup.com has turd loads of groups on there where you can meet up for a few beers with like-minded folks.

[South2003]

Well, with Christianity, you have to be friendly with the most hypocritical pew warmers, because, well, it's the "godly†thing to do .

 

I certainly do not lose sleep over those friendship

[Skiergirl24]

I hear you completely! My brother and I Are not as close, and my entire fam and all friends are Christians. It is hard and it angers me that so many intelligent people are just warped and delusional. I get spoken to when I talk about being agnostic yet it is perectly fien for my fam and friends to bring up God..say grace, talk about going to church, talk about prayer etc. When that happens I always make my voice known...I'm not invisible and I'm not going to be silent and go along with their ridiculous charades any longer. I feel utterly alone because everyone looks at me like I am the delusional one. I don't have imaginary friends, they do! They are the neurotic ones - not me!

 

 

 

 

Damnit man. I feel so alone. All my family (except one cousin) are Christians. All my real friends are Christians from my former church of attendance. I can't seem to connect with anyone else beside these people. Knowing that I am an atheist has somewhat weakened our relationships. My family and I don't speak as warmly and as often as we used to. My Christian friends are at church a lot of the time, and I don't speak or spend as much time with them as I used to. Basically, my social life has taken a huge plunge since I left the church I used to attend and became an atheist. You just have to understand that I was a regular church going religious freak. I would be at church a lot and it was fun being with everyone there and being a part of that large community (the church I used to go to is huge and there are a lot of people that go there). Now it's been a little under a year since I've last gone to that church. I feel isolated and alone. It's a crap feeling. I often wish I had never been so rational to discover Christianity was bogus. I know the solution is to find another social community and/or some new friends (and hey, maybe even make a new family of my own), but it's more difficult for me to do these things under my current circumstances. I live in a community that is mostly Christian. The majority of other people around my area are too wild for me. I can't really find new friends that are suitable for me. So I just stick around with the old click when I get a chance or spend my time with my family or am alone for a lot of the time. I'm lonely as hell and I don't know what to do. Currently, I'm applying for some in and out of state pharmacy schools, am working on my masters degree in biology, and am living at home. Any advice on how I can get out of this lonely, socially bumbed situation?

 

Sorry for being so jumpy in my writing...my thoughts are everywhere at the moment.