Losing My Religion

"I'm what you would call a tele-existential atheist. I believe there is a intelligence to the universe excluding certain parts of New Jersey" ~ Woody Allen

Rachel Sara had a great entry on if religion plays a big factor in your dating life. It was such a great question I figured I needed more space to expound on my answer.

When I first started dating again after my divorce I wasn't quite sure where it would fit, but that was like many things. When I was growing up as many things it was important at times and at other not so. I was raised an on and off Roman Catholic. At times we went to church and for years we didn't. There was no rhyme or reason. I did get communed and confirmed which was the most structured religious time I ever got. I was pretty religious after that, proud to wear my cross every day, etc. However teenage life was such a shit hole that I didn't see the reason to it all.

For 18 years afterward I was an atheist. I was proud of my non-belief and as always I didn't care about what you believed as long as you thought about your decision. However my marriage and the subsequent birth of our son really pushed me back into another deeper shit hole.

So for the last 8 years I've been spiritual in nature and very happy. I still don't have it all worked out, but it works for me.

In my dating life now I do stay away from overly religious people since I've found we can't follow separate roads. What I usually look for is people whose outlook on life is open and accepting. Since a closed mind rarely stops at religion. It's been bumpy at times. The biggest problem I had with religion was with the Planner. Our visions of death were very different. While I was accepting of hers she found it very difficult to deal with me. She believed in Heaven and I don't. I follow the thought of, "give me my roses while I'm alive because I won't need them when I'm dead." The conversation use to come up a lot when we use to go to her dad's grave.