In my own mind, I stopped going to meetings cold turkey. But now that I think about it, I realize that I had been floundering for a fews years and would go through spells where I'd stop going for a couple of weeks at a time before restarting again. That's because I found it all so hopelessly miserable. Yet I blamed myself for feeling that way, just as we were taught to do. Finally, I hit a wall and realized I needed to get away from the whole thing. So I decided to quit going to meetings until I saw a reason to return. (I never did.) I wanted to decide for myself if their truth was true or not.
I told my wife about it. She was very upset, though she never had good meeting attendance herself. JWs started crawling out of the woodwork about 2 weeks later. I suspect someone made an announcement about me or took it upon themselves to spread the word. I would call what took place over the next 2 years or so harassment, even by the legal definition. If I had completely made up my mind that this wasn't "the truth" back then, I would have notified the police. Looking back, I wish I had done so.
The only special effort I made in escaping the KH was avoiding the topic of religion with Witnesses, though they kept bringing it up. In recent years, whenever a Witness goes there, I simply warn them that they don't want to have that conversation with me. When they insist (they almost always insist) I shift focus to how their belligerant behavior and superior attitude only pushes me further away instead of drawing me closer to their faith. Note that, as an atheist, I tend to focus more on their actions than their beliefs anyway. (I don't dislike them for being JWs; I dislike it when they act like superior, closed-minded jerks.)
Ultimately, I've never been DFed, though I seriously considered DA many times. If I had come out to an elder, I might have been. But that never happened. The Witnesses I was close to felt just as miserable and oppressed as I did. I am no longer close to them, of course. On some level, they seem to think that I'm just some crazy mixed up kid who'll find his way back some day, even though I'm nearly 40. They remember how miserable I was and seem to assume that everything other reason I give is just a smoke screen. If any of them have reported me, nothing has come from it. I've never gone out of my way to try deconverting any of them, so they only have so much to report anyway.
Most Witnesses literally just ignore me as if I've been DFed even if they want to talk with my wife and I'm standing right next to her. This is especially true of the older ones. My wife, though still a JW, rarely participates in what they do and sees many of the flaws that I see. I think that's a good thing. All in all, things are WAY better since I left.
