Longinius Spear once quoted Ernest Hemmingway, in a presentation at Eve: Vegas, "There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter."
Personally I think that if you believe that you're still in the delusion phase where you're projecting your fantasy of what playing Eve should be like, compared to what playing Eve is actually like. That fantasy lasted a long time for me, like 3/4 years.
In reality battles are copying someone's prescribed fit, click a direction to align, letting your squad leader warp you. Eventually you might actually get a fight, which consists entirely of clicking the first name on an alphabetically sorted list and pressing F1. There's no skill, only the adrenaline rush of losing something you spent 2 weeks grinding for.
And don't forget, you spend 2 hours or even days between each of these battles waiting to even start the fight.
The big contradiction in Eve is that the thrill comes from permadeath, but it's only a thrill because the grinding is onerous. If everyone had infinite isk, no-one would play it because the fundamental combat gameplay is super boring.
Edit: Actually I prefer this response: I think how true an EVE player finds the above statement is a good indicator of how effectively they played the game to begin with.