Given your further information, I'm going to suggest that the issue will lie more in your technique in both shaving with an open blade and also the possibility of bad stropping technique. The best thing for both these faults is practice. With stropping, I would recommend doing it slowly while concentrating on keeping even tension on your strop, keeping the razor flat against the strop with little to no pressure, only what is required to maintain the blade at that flat contact. In my own early days of stropping I was making the mistake of going too fast and not actually keeping the edge down on the strop, just the spine was on the strop surface. It is also possible to make the opposite mistake and have the spine raised too high with the blade at too high an angle, thus rolling the edge and requiring in most cases a trip to the hone.
With the shaving side of things, it is always easiest to start with just a days growth rather than anything much heavier. Put the blade flat against your skin like you are going to strop but then raise the spine about one to two spine thicknesses from the skin to find your optimum shave angle. You may need to raise or lower that angle to find the optimum but work in small increments and start by trying the spine closer to the skin rather than further away.
Once again, it will take a little practice and patience, but you will get there in the end. I started this game about 16 years ago and gave it up as a bad joke not having the resources or the knowledge that we have with the internet and this forum at that time, along with not having a 'Shave Ready' razor to add to my many, many un-educated mistakes. I always had it in the back of my mind to succeed, and carried my razor with me everywhere I travelled, as a constant reminder to get educated and try again. It just took a few years for that to come about. I found this forum about a month after I started to try and learn again. I had found information on honing and had bought a 1000/6000 hone practiced doing that a bit before I finally got things right with that, thankfully not screwing up my only razor in the process. Eventually got a rough, read harsh and painful, shave for the first time out of my razor. Felt the elation of some success, learnt some more about finer grit hones and bought a 3000/8000 grit to get a smoother edge. Tried shaving again with even better results, still not perfect though. About a week or so later, while doing some more searching for information I came across this forum, learnt a helluva lot in a very short space of time by reading everything in the Wiki (More in a few hours, than what I had found in several years). After that I made a commitment to use nothing but the cut-throat razor until I got it right. I was getting some of the best shaves of my life by about six weeks in and haven't looked back. I now own more than one razor, mostly straights, but with a DE and a Rolls thrown in that make up a seven day set of razors. Not that I use a different one everyday, but certainly enough razors to last me and a family of football teams a lifetime of use.
Anyway, I wish you all the best and hope that little bit of my personal story helps you with your own efforts.
Mick