Things that you take for granted about your life, which might secretly be triggering other people [5 min read]

“ But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!” Galatians 5v15, the Holy Bible
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[Note: This is a previously unpublished post that I initially drafted back in October 2025]

Well it appears that I have recently caught yet more drama. This could result in one of my usual angry rants, but I am going to avoid doing that for now. What I am going to talk about instead is this: things that you take for granted about your life, which might secretly be triggering other people.

Here’s the thing: in my life I like to avoid confrontation as much as is possible, and ideally live a quiet and peaceful life. From my experience of life thus far, there are some prominent things about my life which I’m quite proud of actually, and which have also triggered other people. Because I want to live a peaceful, quiet life, and just go about my day-to-day activities without being unnecessarily disturbed or hindered, I prefer not to trigger people. So on a day-to-day basis I do my best to not advertise these aspects of my life which have previously triggered people.  These include things such as some of my goals in life, as well as some things I have previously achieved. So I go about my life trying to look as inconspicuous and unassuming as possible.

So I have to admit I’ve been genuinely surprised to recently discover that even in my going about quietly, there are still things about me which apparently radiate from me very brightly, and which people unavoidably notice and which trigger them deeply all the same.*

– The self-respect I have for my life regarding men.   I was just thinking about it earlier today, when it first occurred to me to write this post, that this entire blog is an ongoing expression of deep self-respect.  The fact that I make stipulations about what I want in marriage, and a man, and the fact of what those stipulations actually are, the fact that I even evaluate myself to find out who I truly am, and what would truly suit me, so that I don’t then ruin my life by making an unfitting choice of husband – all of those different factors are an expression of self-respect. Here’s the thing though: even though I don’t talk about this blog much, these days, and it’s one of the things that I deliberately don’t advertise, the attitudes still come across in the way I talk about men and my expectations about marriage. It must be so obvious that I expect to be treated with courtesy and dignity in my marriage, and I am going to insist on such a marriage for myself, or stay single.
To my amazement, even this has been sufficient to trigger people. The fact is that many women apparently have not/did not insist on this for themselves. For some women it appears to be almost an affront to them, or an expression of exaggerated self-importance, that I would think like this or think that I should automatically deserve this, when so many other women, possibly most women have experienced such pain in marriage. But guess what?  This type of thinking has been available to each one of us from the very outset, if only we knew. So every single woman could have insisted on this for herself too, if she only knew. From the outset each of us could have decided that we wanted an excellent man or marriage, and we could have insisted on that.

It is not that men have not tried to offer their poor character to me too, of course they have.  Accepting the poor character that other people have to offer you, especially romantically, is not an expression of humility. Conversely, rejecting it is not an expression of pride. Self-respect is realising that whoever you are, you too are entitled to walk in excellence, and also require excellence from your spouse or partner. Thankfully God has blessed me with an abundance of that self-respect before making the mistake of marrying the wrong person. To other people looking on, however, that is apparently quite jarring to watch.

• The peacefulness of my life from day to day &
• The fact that I largely avoid drama

Please believe me that it is not accidental in the slightest that I generally live a peaceful life free of drama. I have certainly had my own fair share, and then some, of situations full of drama in the past. At one point, after yet another bitter rant, I sat down and realised that much of my pain and frustration in life was coming from people. So if I cut out those problematic people, then I would also cut out that drama! And believe me, that has worked.  I guess that when other people look at you, especially when you are doing your best to act unassuming, they don’t know why your life might be different from theirs.  They might not know that behind this seemingly unassuming facade there is lots, and lots and lots, of evaluation, analysis, writing, watching of YouTube videos, conscious self- improvement. Therefore they might be tempted to think that it is a just a lucky accident.  This might be more likely to trigger them, than if they knew just how much work goes into all this.

As I am saying, at the moment, my life seems to have attracted that same drama that I usually try to avoid.  It’s almost as if people look at my life and think that it is somehow “unfair” that I have somehow managed to escape all the fun, so they will take it upon themselves to make sure that they insert the missing drama into my life themselves, to redress the balance.
Seriously!  Which means that they are now going to be in a position to observe my next trick: how I gently and quietly extricate myself from problematic people and situations!

*I should also note that sometimes, unknown to you, other people brag on your behalf to others about things that you deliberately keep hidden…So honestly you may not know what it is that people may or may not know about you that they are reacting to.