This is such an interesting topic... and very complex. It's hard to know what's the right thing to say or to believe.
My boy is now 6 months old. For various reasons, bf has been a struggle for us from the start- and often far from enjoyable. And yet we've persevered- him & me- and here we are still bf, and hopefully for a long time more. I have to add, in order to be honest, that I also give him some formula at night (since he was 4 & a half months). There are many reasons for this, irrelevant to this debate, so I won't go into them. Just mentioning this to make clear that I'm no breastfeeding purist- because of my beliefs & because of circumstances, I've ended up doing mixed feeding of a sort, and I'm relatively ok with my choice.
However, between my breastfeeding & my formula feeding, there's no question that the breastfeeding is what is closest to my heart. It's what I feel I have needed support for at various times (and I've not always got the support I needed). It's what I have felt undermined & attacked about- mainly by family members who seem to be threatened & even angry the more time passes & I'm still breastfeeding. Questions such as 'how is the bf going' or 'are you still bf' or 'how much longer do you intend to bf for' or 'surely your milk is not thick enough at this point' or 'you do know bf after 2-3 months is for the mother's benefit solely' are unfortunately ones that I've had to deal with. I always get uncomfortable, defensive, embarrased & basically made to feel as if I need to lie when it comes to bf.
On the other hand, in my RL, I always make a point (not sure why) of almost undermining my choice & my struggle to bf, when I'm talking to ff mothers. I do this because I sincerely feel their choice & their circumstances need to be respected. However, if I'm fair (and as the months pass & I'm still bf), I have to agree that I'm not getting support by ff mothers, in fact, I feel more & more that I'm seeing like some sort of loony for carring on. And my boy is just 6 months, really a very small baby, but it's as if I'm bf a boy of 6 years of something, when I hear those arguments.
Sorry that this is such a rambling post. I guess there's a lot of emotionality that goes with this issue, and I appreciate that this emotionality & pressure (either from others or internal pressure) goes both ways- both ff & bf mothers feel it. To all my ff friends though who feel they're criticized & not understood about their choice, I have to say (and I wish I was able to say this in real life too) that I, as a bf mother, also feel very undermined, criticized & not understood. Very much so. And the thing is, lets be honest, breastfeeding is much much harder work than formula feeding is. So undermining bf has wider effects, in my opinion, than undermining formula feeding. What I'm saying is, if someone undermines ff the worst that can happen is that the mother in question may feel bad (which is not at all a good thing of course). But if a breastfeeding mother is undermined, the worst that can happen is that she will quit bf, due to tiredness, embarrasment, loneliness, lack of support, etc.
Anyway. Sorry for rambling on.