I used to with one of my brothers, but he's dead now. It wasn't about religion. It was the fact that he bullied me, emotionally and physically abused me, and beat the crap out of me from earliest childhood until I was 21 and moved 400 miles away from him. I don't think I ever spoke to him again after that.

He did send me an email (and my other brother apologized for letting him get my address) about 2 years before he died, saying he was trying to reconnect. I ignored him.

Does anyone not?

No. Distance takes care of that. I moved 1990 miles away and see my family a couple of times a year. Perfect relationship.

I have divorced myself from about 90% of my family. There was no sense in their egregious stupidity and negativity! It was as if I was on another planet...like Bizarro World! I'm much much happier...and successful!

Pretty much all of my family. They were complicit in my mother's abuse of me.

Yep. I have a sister who holds grudges and believes she's owed apologies, restitution, what have you. I've had enough so I bid her adieu. I've no hard feelings. It's her issue, not mine.

Yes. I got involved in an estate lawsuit in which after 7 years of litigation I now no longer speak with any member of my mother’s side. Aunts, uncles, cousins.

Yes, yes, yes My entire family abandoned me when I needed them the most. Near the end of her life, the entire family practically stood in line to kiss her ass. I was in a nursing home, recovering from surgery. Whatever she told them was the absolute truth, as far as they were concerned. They paid close attention to what she wanted, and made sure it was carried out. They never as much as asked me what I wanted.

Why this matters: my mother abused me all of my life, in every way a parent can abuse a child. Yes, including THAT. The whole family knew about it. They also knew that she suffered from delusions, such as the thought that, as a child, her mother had tried to kill her for insurance money.

And yet when the time came, when I needed them the most, they sided with my abuser. OK, fine. That showed me how much I was worth to them.

Years later, I still haven't heard from them. My parents were in their 40s when I was born and I'm in my late 50s now, so it's likely some, or maybe even all, of them have died. I don't care.

To show you what a fine group they were, here is the tale of my mother's funeral. My cousin was a retired catholic priest, so my mother wanted him to say something at the funeral. She was nominally lutheran, though she had not attended church in decades.

My cousin got on the podium. He didn't talk much about my mother. But he did relate how, on her death bed, she decided she wanted to become a catholic. So he went through the rituals, though she was too sick to take communion.

My mother never mentioned any of that to my sister (my sister had been with her constantly until she died). My cousin never mentioned it to anyone beforehand. It's my guess he made the whole thing up on the spot, in order to encourage people to become catholics. He'd done similar things before, like giving his standard "evils of abortion" lecture to us whenever we had a family gathering.

Honestly, the people I have made friends with at science fiction conventions, or through my old mail order business, are more family to me than those people that claim to be my "family."

I've been the "black sheep" of my family for pretty much my whole life.
It used to cause me no small amount of pain, until I realized that it was THEIR
choice, not mine, and that is was their loss and not mine.
I didn't need to be around people who constantly put me down and tried to make
me feel bad about myself.
I didn't have to live up to their expectations, and comport myself the way they thought
I 'should'.
I learned to live my own life, on my own terms, and I created my own family.
As I've said a million times before, family isn't about who shares your DNA.
Blood means nothing.
Family are the people who know you best, love you anyway, and always have your back.

I hated my dad, he's dead so forget it

I'm gay, and a large portin of my family is Mormon. We reached an unspolekj agreement tht i wont' talk about my personal lif ein front of them and they wont' try to get my to go back to church.

oh hell, most of my family has totally disowned me. I ring my disabled sister and email with my youngest brother. Rest of the family I refuse to accept I still exist. Only a little is to do with my lack of religion, most is because I won't cop crap, they are quite a disgusting bunch, wealthy and self centred. I am the black sheep, I walked away from the corporate world, walked away from my marriage, everything. I am the family disappointment, best and brightest, most likely to succede, highest achiever, now the biggest failure.

I have not spoken to nor even had contact of any sort with my remaining family since 2005. My parents are both dead and gone and my 3 sisters, 1 younger, 2 older, are arrogant self-righteous pains in the arse at the best of times. 2 of them are Catholics by choice and marriage ( both now divorced btw), the other is grasping, money-grubbing, heavy drinking ( almost to the point of being an Alcoholic), self-indulgent control freak.
I do NOT miss them in any way shape nor form considering that as a child I was the one my 'mother' would punish severely with what ever came to hand for their misdeamors, etc.

Seems I opened up a can of pythons on this one

I do, but it has nothing to do with religion. I cut the toxic people , whether related or not out of my life after my mom died about ten years ago. I didn't need the drama in my life.

I have an aunt my mother's only full blooded sister who is a complete and total psycho. She's a narcissist and doesn't even realize it. She has spent the last almost 20 years angry at my mother because when she tried to commit suicide and my mother found her she was removed from the house and put into an ambulance but the EMTs saw her naked. So ever since then she has been trying to get everyone to hate my mother meanwhile she doesn't do a damn thing for anyone except herself. She is utterly a conniving b****. Then my other aunt and cousin are severe Western Baptist conservative always trying to save us. They take everything we post on Facebook as a personal attack even though we don't even talk to them and will call us up randomly sobbing that they heard something on Christian talk radio that they realized was God trying to tell them to save us. Sometimes I just cannot stand them.

I think its funny you put vegan ina similar category as Christian. When it comes down to it there are really no irreconciliable differences. It is a choice people make

My brother has accused me of taking his brother away from him. To explain. We grew up brothers and I am trans. So, in his mind, I killed his brother. Too bad, he is the only other survivor of my immediate family and refuses to even talk to me.

So, yeah, unless he ever grows the fuck up, he's 59, BTW, I'm an only child.

Our real family is under the same unbrella as we are, Not those in blood line but those that care

I have not spoken 2 or seen my father in over 15 years, he is a bad man. When my brother gets in2 his meth and all that crap, he gets violent, so when he's using I stay away from him, but when he's clean he's one of my favorite people. I have a cousin who robbed several family members while on some drug or another, she's clean I hear now, but until she makes amends with my grandmother and my mom, I stay away from her as well, nobody in my family outright hates me because I don't believe in their god, but it can cause some tension if its brought up

I have an older brother if he's alive he would be 79 y.o I havent seen him since I was a teenager,
nothign religious involved he's just probably doesnt like me!

Yes, but we muddle on in spite of it.

I have but its nothing to do with religion

I've alienated people across time, I don't blame them for being who they are. I get tired of expectations and having to do things I don't want to do to please others, I never want to hurt anyone's feelings so I end up disregarding my own instead. I don't like when people talk bad about others or when they tell others how to live or don't listen to you after they ask you what you want then do something totally different. The older I guess the less bullshit I allow in my life. Just working and keeping my life together is enough to deal with sometimes.