I personally have a SO who is also an atheist, and i don't quite know how i'd live with a theist. I mean the absolute dislisonal things that they believe I would probably push all the time with things like " are you surious?" "You think a man rose from the dead?" "Turned water into wine?" "really". Just over and over until she saw how ludicrious it is, because it is ludicrious. I'd probably get kicked out for laughing at her beliefs because they are funny. Just my take i know i seem like i'd be an ass to a theistic girlfriend but i don't know how else i'd act.

I've had four major significant relationships in my 25 years (including the one I'm currently in).  Let's give you the breakdown and maybe you can see what dating theists/agnostics/atheists and everything in between nets.

The first real 'adult' (sex and everything!  oh boy!) relationship I had was with a girl named Allison, who I met at a fraternity party and assumed from her ability to chug beer, get naked in front of tons of strangers and make out with other girls would be an atheist, or at least an agnostic.

Man, how wrong can a person be when he doesn't expect them to be a hypocrite.  She was a Catholic, who attended church on campus at the Newman Center and everything.  I'm fairly sure that Catholicism isn't happy with premarital sex with multiple partners of both genders, but that's neither here nor there.  I stuck around because a) I was getting some and B) I thought that she might change her beliefs, considering how she was only paying lip service to Catholicism in the first place.

I can state unequivocally - a lip service Christian will NEVER change their beliefs when called on it; they will either disregard your statements or hightail it to church.

That relationship crashed and burned - and I ended up dating another girl named Patricia, who was a Baptist.  Not only did she not put out, but her parents thought that it was only proper to try to convert me to their faith.  A few months of the insanity later, I left the relationship.

Enter Amanda.  I met her online - and she proudly stated her atheism.  Excellent!  We dated for almost 2 1/2 years, but there were problems.  Her parents, for example, were lapsed Jehovah's Witnesses.  I celebrated my 21st birthday in their home, and was castigated for having a beer on my birthday.  The relationship failed because of distance, and lying on both of our ends.  While I wouldn't call it a 'healthy' relationship, we stuck together because we shared a lack of belief.

Now I'm with Kristen, and it's been about 2 1/2 years.  She's an agnostic who doesn't think about matters of faith, but states that people who worry about Gods don't seem completely healthy to her.  When I'm ranting about Christies, she calms me down.  When I make jokes about Islamic suicide bombers, she's there to tell me that I'm really not funny.

What's the lesson in all of this?  Your beliefs (or lack of beliefs) are very important to keeping a relationship going.  It also helps to have tons of patience.  So, armchair Christians or agnostics, depending on their level of faith, can be a decent match - as well as atheists.

Part of me wants to find a little Christian sheep, deflower her, and then tell her she's Hellbound and kick her out of my car - but I think that's because I'm an asshole.

.....from the mind of Family Guy....

It's difficult. I make it work. I will never do it again though if this doesn't work out.

The problems I've had with girls that were atheists (or whom I guessed were atheists by their speech and manner), have very radical appearances.  Those include unnatural hair color (usually blood red) and many piercings.  That's kind of weird to me.  But thanks for the imput, and I'll keep looking!

That's the kind of girls I like, so I've never had any problems. The biggest problem I have with dating today, is that I'm married.

My wife reads these boards, so if I stop posting for a while, you'll know why

Have you tried looking for love on-line:

http://www.secularity.com/

http://www.atheistpassions.com/

http://www.freethinkermatch.com/

My fiance is what we both call a "functional atheist".  She doesn't really care that much about the subject, but lives her day to day life as if she were an atheist.

Her extended family is very religious so to keep the peace with them she doesn't really say anything to them and has pleaded with me to not come out of the closet with them.

She is a very smart person and if she ever had the time (two jobs and school) to do the research I'm 99% sure she would share just about every stance that I have on the subject.

The only disagreements we have on the subject of religion is things like attending christenings of family members, or getting our own kids baptised in the future.  She wants to do these things just to make everyone else happy where I don't want to look like I'm in any way promoting such actions.

atheistpassions.com: search for female 24-36

Your search produced no results, please try to broaden your search.

secularity.com  search for female 24-36

1 result, Asheville NC (250 miles away from me.) Last login: 11 months ago.

Freethinkermatch.com: search for female 24-36

3 results between 65-150 miles away

This is what it's like trying to find a date in the deep south.

I really need to move.

With me it's more like, chat-chat-chat-chat-smile-number-everything's going well...

Her: Oh, and the minister at my church blah blah blah blah...

Me: "sigh.  Ok.  I'll call you sometime.  See you."

 Toss number in trash as I leave.

Yeah. You guys go ahead and work on it. Try being my age, female, single and an Atheist.

They all want you to go to church with them, help raise their grandchildren (I guess because they raised such crummy kids that they can't do it themselves) and either watch the "big game" or sit in a bass boat for hours on end.

Where the hell are the Atheist men my age, sans kids/grandkids that want to go to the theater and stretch their minds?

I haven't thought about it much. Last relationship involved a fellow who borrowed $30,000 and couldn't afford to pay it back. After that, I wasn't too much in the mood to date, ya know? But know that it's a few years later, I do find myself thinking about it. That same guy who still owes me tons of money (he is finally paying me something monthly) was Catholic. He didn't really go to church, so I tended to forget. Then something would come up and I'd be shocked each time to hear what he was hung up on.

Susan, I empathize with you. Add to your list the fact that I'm living fulltime in my RV (for the last two and a half years), don't want to settle down in one place, and have five dogs. And you see why the odds are pretty low for me to find my perfect mate. LOL

It would be very difficult for me to date a theist again. I've had two major relationships. Marriage that lasted 11 years. He was on his way to becoming a non-believer, but had weird hang ups still. Like he'd go through the motions despite his unbelief, which I thought was a strange and insidious form of lying. He's now buddist and was fortunate to find a buddhist woman who he married and they're living happily ever after.

I love bass boats! Bass boats are cool! But while the bass boat owner is fishing, I wanna be scuba diving off it!!!!!!!

not all theists believe in Hell.  I don't really like this topic...it reminds me of Christians, or Muslims, or Jews saying I can only marry people of my own faith.  I would like to see Atheists more open to relationships of all kinds, even if it involves a believer in God.  I however wouldn't expect to see an Atheist marrying a born-again Christian nut..but I don't like the idea of just rejecting the idea of being involved with a believer..its not as if they all are "evil."

You miss the point. I have no problem having relationships with theists. Most of the people I've known in life were theists. But I'm pragmatic. I can see how things would end up, and that it's not worth hurting myself or another in a bid that will fail. For example, a theist will want children to be raised theists. Whereas I will not stand for that. There's too many inconsistancies between a theist and myself for any relationship of that level to go anywhere but south.

Well!

I must be one of the very very few people here currently married to a Catholic.

How does it work? She never talks to me about religion, though she does mention going to church and liking the singing.  I try not to point out ludicrous things about the faith.

I did tend to get in a more 'militant atheist' mindset for a while there when I was drunk, but have kept this in check much more lately.

I do hope to one day come up with a watertight arguement for atheism that she could accept... but if I could do that then I'd probably be the first person in the world, eh?

It's a fantastic relationship though, somehow we really go well together despite this and I hope our beliefs won't ever drive any kind of wedge between us.

Before we married she agreed to not push religion on our kids (when we have them) i.e no requirement to go to church, she doesn't say grace anyway etc until they are old enough to have a chance of making up their own minds about it, based on whatever evidence they can gather (tee hee!).  I agreed to allow them to be baptised, as I don't really see that much harm in it, I don't think the experience will influence them one way or the other in religion.

If anybody has any questions... feel free!

I'll bet they still have that kids/grandkids thing going on, though.  *sigh* 

I forget that people are scattered all over the place on this site and that many of you come from areas where religion really is very 'in your face'.  Come to New Jersey, there are lots of atheists here!

What about dating/marrying someone who isn't religious, but who's family is very religious?  How would you deal with that?  My boyfriend is non-practicing/agnostic but his family is crazy catholic (not all of them, but a lot). 

And Daveyboy - It's very rude to as a lady her age.

 Most of my family are strong catholics also, and I've dated women who had christian families as well.  It's not tough for me, because if any of my family want to disown me for being an atheist, i've decided that i just dont care.  Same thing for anyone i date.  If they want me to do things to appease their family, then i wont be the guy for her. I'm not a nazi about it, i'll go to baptism parties, or christmas celebrations, or weddings in churches(for other people's weddings that is).  However, i would not get married in a church to make my so's parents happy, or have our child baptized, or attend easter services.  If anyone doesnt like it, they go to hell as far as i'm concerned.

Bah! I'm a blunt kind of guy, and that will never change. It's just that the talk about "at my age" and  dating guys with grandchildren seems to imply that she's kinda old. Sorry, I mean....mature. Looking at her avatar, I would guess that she's in her mid thirties.

Susan, yes I did have to meet with a priest a couple of times and agree to a few things.

For the most part the things I had to agree to weren't all that hard on me.  I had to agree to only having 1 wife for example, which was all I intended anyway.  As mentioned, I had to agree to having any children baptised which I didn't see any problem with as I view it as a pretty much harmless ceremony that will make some people happy.  One or two other things, but nothing I wasn't willing to either concede because of it being harmless (as far as I can tell) or change my mind about at a later date if I didn't like it.

One of the hardest things was trying to keep a straight face and not come off as condescending to a person I view as a career-idiot.

My wife wanted to get married in a Church, so we did, it was actually really nice as some other couple had gotten married there just previous and all their unbelievably large amount of flowers was still there and nicely arranged for us lol

One funny thing was trying to find a reading for my sister-in-law-to-be to read, apparently it's quite difficult to find something in the bible suitable in today's society.  All the suggestions seemed to be along the lines of "the greatest gift god can give a man is a silent wife" which is pretty demeaning these days!

The two that stand out the most... I have dated one Muslim in my life... i'll never do that again. She dumped me within the first week - never went anywhere too deep - but the religion requires them to be psychotic lunatics.

I've also dated a mormon who was a total cockwhore. What can I say? religious chicks have been a bad experience to me. 

Well, I don't know if this is exactly on topic, but this seems like the closest thread to post it in.

A couple of months ago, I decided that maybe Match.com would be a good way for me to seek out non-theist women.  There just aren't many in this little po-dunk college town, after all.

So, two months, and not much luck at all.  I was reading over my profile, wondering if I'd put something really awful in it.  I read it, re-read it, and couldn't find anything that wasn't accurate.  Then, an idea hit me.  They have a function where you can find "similar portraits."  I thought, "Hey, I'll check out the competition.  If they're all successful, handsome, and look like they have reasons to be picky, I'll know I'm on the right track.  If they're all losers, I'll know my expectations are just too high."

Well, I learned something about myself, alright.  Here's what Match.com has to say about me:

*************** 

Sorry, no other Portraits like [notmyrealprofilename] can be found;
[notmyrealprofilename] is one in a million! 

<<< Back to [notmyrealprofilename]'s profile

***************

At the very least, I've learned why I always feel as if I'm not like everyone around me.  It's true, apparently.

But we're not in love with you. 

Aww... thank you.

I'm beginning to think I'm just going to have to go somewhere far, far away from here.  I kind of wish I'd been in this situation a few years ago when I wasn't quite so tied to this part of the country.  We'll see.

Wow, and to think I've never felt as part of a minority in my Atheism, both while growing up and now, really makes me thankful!