Un-Learning

There's been a few posts recently about the trials and tribulations of relationships post ILIASM shithole from members who are only fairly recently  out, some of whom are exploring new relationships, and a few who are exploring relationships with other members of this group. That's pretty much my experience, so I thought I'd put down my thoughts about the subject.

I believe that once you get out of an ILIASM deal, you have a heap of "Un-Learning" to do.
If you are anything like me, your experience in an ILIASM shithole taught you to react to certain situations in a certain way to "keep the peace" or protect your emotions or to stop from exploding.
They may have been really good and useful strategies in your ILIASM deal, but they may be poisonous in your new situation. 
You may have to Un-Learn a lot of them.

Anecdote (I think I've recounted this one before)
It is 2010 and Ms enna and I have been living together a couple of months.
She gets home this particular day, and I can tell that there's something up. I fish around a bit, and the suddenly she blurts out "I bought a new sewing machine".
"Oh, that's good" I say, whilst thinking "I wonder if she is about to add "and I ploughed your car into a tree on the way home".
There is no such incident and I cannot see for the life of me what is the big deal here.
We discuss sewing machines (about which I know fuck all) and gradually tease the story out of her.
In a previous life, Ms enna was used to a spouse who would have arcked up at such an event, been critical of the purchase, the price, the necessity etc etc etc. and she had a genuine fear that I might be tarred with the same brush.
She must have apologised for this purchase 8 or 10 times in the next hour or so.
And my reassuring responses became more and more flippant with each apology (and I can do a very good line in flippancy !!!)
She had managed to tar me with the same brush as her prior spouse.
And I had managed to trivialise her anxiety.
Not good.
But a really good wake up call for us both that we both had a lot to Un-Learn about our initial reactions to some things and situations. Some minor, some major.

Early days, we found other things where reactions we had carried forward from our old deals were not at all helpful in our new joint deal. And these things needed to be Un-Learned. There was some serious shit in these things too, far more dramatic than the "sewing machine" incident.
We became rather good at de-constructing situations, then putting them back together in ways we could identify with.
We became far more attuned to each others likely response to a given situation might be instead of what past experience may have had us fearing what response might be forthcoming.
The underying principle was to try and ensure that we were not making each other pay for mistakes made in other relationships, and I think this is key.
Ms enna is Ms enna, she is not the former Mrs baz.
And baz is baz. Not the former Mr enna.
It is a brand new dynamic, and past players are not relevant - APART FROM THE LESSONS THEY TAUGHT US. 

And of course all the while this Un-Learning was going on, we were also Learning-Afresh what worked for us.
And that Un-Learning the useless and Learning-Afresh the useful propelled the relationship forward at warp speed. But not without the odd bit of Un-Learning that still crops up after 7+ years.

Something Brother flashjohn wrote in another thread today made a big impression on me. He said words about his new relationship to the effect that he feared "the other shoe dropping" but Kimmie assured him there was no other shoe about to drop.
In ILIASM deals, shoes seem to drop relentlessly and continuously.