GIMP :: Select Part Of Image And Copy It To Another Area

I've tried using GIMP many times, yet I've accomplished very little, given all of GIMP's functionality. For example:

If I want to select part of an image and copy it to another area or to a new image/layer, and also FEATHER the edges, here's how I'd do it in an old graphics app I often used years ago:

1. Select the area.2. Hold Ctrl while moving selection with Move tool.3. Use the slider to soften the edges to my liking.4. Press Enter to anchor selection. Done.

And there were sliders also for opacity and other things. So very SIMPLE because the prog. was designed very intuitively. How would I accomplish the same in GIMP? Well, most of the time, I WOULD ACCOMPLISH NOTHING! At best, I'd enter values into the box, not like the result, enter new values, repeat. And that's on a good day.

Somebody write a SCRIPT/PLUGIN that allows the use of sliders exactly as described above! I desperately want to be a HAPPY GIMP user, but I'm growing ever more hopeless. I don't want to turn on my older PC just to use a graphics app that actually lets me get things done.