Hi BibBabBob
You do seem quite conflicted. I'll give you my experience as it sounds similar.
I had a nightmare with sore nipples and painful latch in the early days. Many people said it would get easier and it did. However I really did not like breastfeeding. I kept going out of sheer willpower. The pain did get better but to be honest it always did and often still does hurt quite a bit - sometimes it was excrutiating for the entire feed despite constantly re-latching. I found the nights exhausting and was desperate to give up.
I kept thinking that if I made it to six months I'd have done enough as most people here are saying. However when we got to six months I was so tired and exhausted I couldn't even face the daily sterlising I believed was necessary (now I know I didn't really have to sterilise but then I believed I did). I kept on out of sheer laziness really. I wanted to sleep - not express /sterilise etc.
A few things then happened that made me carry on even longer (ds is 14 months and I still bf)
1 When ds got to 9 months I was going back to work (3 days a week) so I did make sure he was using a cup with a spout to drink water with his meals from about 6-7 months. It took a while but by 8 months he was drinking water out of a cup.
2 I pretty much stopped bfing when we were out (or certainly never offered) - We were nearly always home for 2 naps a day so he got a feed am/eve and 2 times before or after naps. He also fed 2-4 times a night. This seemed to make the bfeeding more manageble for me- though the nights were still killing.
3 Over time as he had more solids I just stopped offering to bf except if it really suited me. I was lucky that ds only really asked to bfeed much at night.
4 When I went back to work there was no way I was expressing (I did do that in the early months to give a bottle of ebm a day but I really hated it and he started to reject the bottle anyway). I gave the childminder some formula in a bottle then switched to a cup after a while to give him an afternoon feed - he never really took much milk (max 1-2 oz) but did drink water. After 2 months I just stopped the afternoon milk feed when I was at work.
5 The bfeeding is still sometimes painful (occasionally unbearably so) but the feeds got so quick it wasn't really too much of a problem.
6 After about 8-9 months (YES I do mean months not weeks) I suddenly realised that I actually quite enjoyed some of the feeds. This was probaly because ds started to sleep a bit better (1-2 feeds a night).
Now I feed am/pm when at work (3 days) and he has no other milk during the day. On home days he sometimes has a feed in the middle of the day and occasionally one at night. I really love the am feeds now, we lie in bed and cuddle and ds has learned to be gentle if it is hurting me too much. I say 'gentle, gentle' and I notice that it starts to hurt less.
I can honestly say that bfeeding him now is a joy but this really didn't happen for me for many months after many people have already stopped bfing. Part of the reason now don't want to give up is I persevered so long when I hated it, now that I mostly like it I want to enjoy it for a bit longer.
In summary - The main things that helped me were 1 - reducing the day feeds and then when he started sleeping better less feeds at night - obviously this went hand in hand with increasing his solids.