There was a situation at work years back where someone consistently took credit for contributions i made. Not dramatically. Subtly enough that calling it out felt disproportionate in the moment. So i said nothing. Kept contributing. Kept watching it happen. It kept happening. Of course it did.
I used to tell myself i was being mature. Choosing my battles. Not making unnecessary drama over something i could just move past. But what i was actually doing was teaching someone, through repeated demonstration, that this particular behaviour had no consequences. That they could do it and nothing would change. And they learned that lesson very well because i was a thorough teacher.
What you tolerate consistently becomes the standard. Not because people are all deliberately predatory, most are not. But because humans naturally expand into the space available to them. If the space has no edges, no signals that something is not acceptable, behaviour that would otherwise stop just continues.
This applies far beyond workplaces. In friendships, in romantic relationships, in family dynamics. The pattern of what you accept, quietly, repeatedly, over time, sets the terms of how you are treated far more powerfully than any single conversation about what you want.
I am not saying respond to every single thing with a confrontation. Some things genuinely are not worth the energy and learning to distinguish between those is its own skill. But there is a category of things that matter, things that are happening consistently, things that cost you something real, where silence is not maturity. It is just a policy that benefits everyone except you.
Setting a standard for how you are treated is not aggression. It is information. It tells people what you value and what you will not accept on an ongoing basis. Some people will adjust when they receive that information. Some will not, which itself is information you needed.
You are always teaching people how to treat you. The question is whether you are doing it consciously or by default.
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