Driving a manual depends mostly on the driver's habits, if you drive it like most people drive an automatic in city traffic, the clutch(maybe your knee!) won't last as long. But you also control the gear selection and you can see what's going on in front of you, and predict what's going to happen and can always be in the right gear at the right time and minimize shift and stopping, so it can be not too bad. The dumb automatics are annoying and probably the 3 shifts down and back up, everytime you're on and off the gas, isn't great, but most of them survive that well enough too. I tend to drive the Outback like my Focus, so it just goes from low idle to fast idle in traffic for the most part.
I certainly don't mind the odd time I get into city traffic with a manual, I just try to go the average speed of traffic and not actually stop too often to minimize slipping the clutch. Probably if I was in stop and go for more than a couple minutes everyday, I might want an automatic?
We've never replaced a clutch or done any work on any of our manuals, and the 3 cars so far seem to be scrapped or sold up near 200k miles. But we live out in the country, so if I come to an "effective" stop instead of complete stop, often the clutch is really only slips for a couple complete stops on most of my trips.
I used to do autocross with my old Focus and did dozens of race launches with it, but even with sticky-ish tires, its weight distribution and fwd prevents too much load on the clutch, and I didn't power shift it into 2nd, as it would just light up the inside tire and send you wide.
My .02$ is if you have some mechanical sympathy, almost all manuals will go the life of the car with a couple fluid changes.
