I love driving manual and I have never had any problems or complaints about it until I took my X off road. The first trip was pretty bad... The second was a bit better and overall things started to improved. However, trying to go over boulders is still something that I struggle with.

Had I had to do things again, I would have gotten an auto only for one reason: My significant other. The X is the spare car and when our primary one breaks down, my girlfriend cannot take the X since she does not know how to drive a stick shift. We end up spending $ on rentals and that is no good... So far we spend around $1.5K on rentals this year (it is a long story) and the amount spent on the auto tranny would have justified itself.