Anecdotally, this is fairly common. I have known people that did not realize they had fairly bad back pain until they went to the doctor for something else and had it treated.
Sometimes, it is only in absence of something that we really notice it, especially if it is truly chronic. I suspect most people have gone somewhere with a fairly loud background noise. At first they may notice it, but after being there for a while they may forget about it and may even forget it was ever there. But they will notice and realize how annoying it was if that noise ever stops.
I have never used SVN or Git (I use Hg at home and VSS at work), so I can't say there.
What I can say is that I didn't realize how painful Java was for me until I started learning Python. That may be a closer analogy, though still not perfect.
Anecdotally, this is fairly common. I have known people that did not realize they had fairly bad back pain until they went to the doctor for something else and had it treated.
Sometimes, it is only in absence of something that we really notice it, especially if it is truly chronic. I suspect most people have gone somewhere with a fairly loud background noise. At first they may notice it, but after being there for a while they may forget about it and may even forget it was ever there. But they will notice and realize how annoying it was if that noise ever stops.