u/Independent_Light611

Dummy has honor + small trumps; the safety play is to ruff high against a possible overruff, yet at the table the urge to ruff low and “save” the honor is strong even when you know better. Postmortem it looks obvious. Live, under time pressure, the temptation hits.
For long-time players:
• Does real-time self-catching improve with experience, or do you mainly get better at recovering after the mistake?
• What specifically helped close the gap between “I know the theory” and “I stop myself before the card leaves my hand”?
• Can coaches/partners meaningfully accelerate this, or is it mostly built through personal repetition?
Is this a universal stage, or does it depend on how a player thinks?
Thanks

I started playing bridge about nine months ago and have been going to my local club pretty regularly for the past couple of months.
I still mess up a lot. Not just the occasional beginner mistake, but the kind where I look back at a hand afterward and honestly can’t figure out how I missed something so obvious. I leave most sessions feeling like I should be improving faster, and I can’t tell if that’s just part of learning bridge or if I’m doing something wrong.
One extra complication is that my partner isn’t really interested in studying or working on the game together, so it’s harder to build on what we learn after sessions.
For those of you who’ve been through the beginner stage: how long did it take before things started to make sense? And how do you tell the difference between a normal rough patch and realizing a game just might not be for you?
Did anyone else spend a long time feeling completely out of their depth at the beginning?

Update:
Thanks everyone for the replies, very helpful indeed.
I was judging myself on months while bridge operates on years. I’ve only played 9 club sessions so far, so still very early days.
Good to know feeling lost at this stage is normal and progress isn’t linear.
I’ll keep playing and see how it goes.