I guess I'm feeling more optimistic today, so:
So I've been thinking more about why the writers are seemingly going down this road with Sam, where he suddenly wants out again, and why that could possibly be a good idea since it obviously won't work for him. You don't have a show with Sam being out of the life so obviously he won't get out, and at first I was annoyed that this was seemingly going to be another life lesson about how Sam Is Always Wrong.
And I think I've decided that I would be okay with this arc (no matter how frustrating it is for Sam!girls atm) if the reason they are doing it is to make him choose the hunting life on his own terms. I think I would like that. Because in the past he's always been dragged into it against his will, and eventually his only motivation was revenge or making amends, and maybe the feeling that he couldn't possibly go back to having a normal life because he was a freak. Between the yellow-eyes super powers, then the demon blood, then the Lucifer vessel-thing, then the fragile wall in his head, then the Lucifer-crazies... Sam has been Not Normal for a long long time. So maybe he'd accepted he had to be a hunter because there was no other option, so he threw himself headfirst into that life cause that is what Sam does.
But now he's had the normal life for a while, and how he came to have it STILL doesn't make complete sense to me, but okay. But IF they use this season for Sam to slowly realize that actually, yeah, he WANTS to be hunting, he WANTS to be there with Dean on his own terms and not because he has nowhere else to go? That at the end of the season he makes that choice for himself because it's where he wants to be and not out of some sense of obligation? Then okay. I think I'm down with that.