I have stuttered since I was born. Primary school was hell because you know kids are assholes but as you said things got better when just stopped thinking about it. I have a normal life, really good friends I have had really nice girlfriends and stuttering have never being a problem. I feel most of the time were my own limits what made stuttering a problem. Over the years I developed some techniques to stutter less but not for other people but to feel better myself. One of those techniques is to know a lot of synonyms of words so I can quickly change the word when I know that the next word will get stuck. Of course did not work on word that can't be changed like my name but most of the times helps me a lot.