I have been so conditioned by my Fighting Game Buddy/Rival, it follows me everywhere
So I have this friend who got into fighting games at the same time that I did, we grew as players together and constantly play against each other. No matter what game we play, be it Tekken, SF, Guilty Gear or any other fighting games, both of us naturally gravitate towards our respective archetypes, him being a grappler and me being a rushdown. For the most part, the only human players we play against is each other.
With that context set, here's the thing. He's a phenomenal grappler (he'll never hear this from me) and throughout the past 2 years that we played, he made sure that I respect that. So much so that it caused me to develop muscle memories that is built specifically to deter him.
He does raw special moves and command grabs in a chain that doesn't effectively make sense, but it always catches me. I played against a CPU Alex in SF3 3rd Strike and I jumped back after a blocked flash chop because I was anticipating a Spiral DDT that never came. And this type of interactions follow me everywhere, even when I'm dominating a fight in a tourney, I end up hesitating because the countless matches against him whittled the confidence in my strings and I ended up being scared of or over-respecting another grappler who has no conventional counters at the moment.
I mean this man will do a giant swing raw from across the screen as king just to mess with me, I ended up forming a muscle memory to break that instead of the more obvious shining wizard, you bet I get caught with that every single time and get made fun of because of it.
Well that's it for the rant, has anyone else ever experienced this? Where your fundamentals are completely warped by a singular person? How do you un-learn something like that?