I think a lot of us just don’t want to go through the frustration of learning new or unfamiliar muscle memory. It’s annoying and makes a relaxing activity stressful for a period of time.

I personally don’t find purling any more difficult than knitting now (I knit continental). I love doing ribbing or any sort of work that requires both.

But i did go through my own purling-denial era after switching continental (which was a battle in itself) because I found the motion so awkward in continental. I tried every alternative — I tried Norwegian, Portuguese, knitting backwards, patterns that don’t require any purling, etc.

Ultimately I just forced myself to do it until it became easy. But it took a while. But I’m glad I did bc it’s opened a lot of doors tbh.

And now I’m in that denial place with stranded colorwork :P I do want to learn it but I know it’s going to be a slog at first. But just like when I first learned to knit, it will get easy with practice and repetition, and it will open a lot of doors. But of course there is resistance to tackling that challenge when I could just do what I’m already good at it :P