You do sound pathetic but so was I and I'm as hard as nails normally. We were boiled frogs is all.
I have an ex I was with for four years and his insidious behaviour was so slow and calculated that I sort of saw it but persuaded myself I didn't. He was charismatic and very interesting but I should have left him after a few months, not allowed it to get as toxic as it did.
The final straw was when his cat (that he had failed to get neutered) had kittens and I turned up at his after dark and in minus temperatures.
As I walked up to his door, I could see through the fog that the cage he used to burn leaves and stuff was upside down in the middle of the lawn but I assumed he had power washed it or something so paid it no more attention.
He cooked for me and we listened to a radio play and were having a reasonably nice evening. It was getting late and I asked him if he had taken his cat to the vet to be spayed and he said yes but she had pulled one of her stitches out and she was staying in overnight. I asked him where he had put the kittens while she was gone because he wouldn't have the cat or kittens in the house. He said 'in the cage'.
I had never heard him use the term 'the cage' before and dismissed it for a while and then it dawned on me and I queried him about the term and he nodded towards the garden.
From half past eight that morning when he had taken the mother cat to the vet, he had put four four week old kittens under the cage that he used to burn stuff. It was minus 2 outside. They had no food, water, bedding - nothing.
I ran outside and gathered them up, stuffed them down my clothes, ran back into his house, grabbed my bag and keys and drove away with them. They were stiff with cold. I didn't know if they would survive. As soon as I had heat in the engine, I put them in the footwell with the blower on them.
The thing that had saved them was that when he had turned the cage over, there was just enough wet dried up leaves in the bottom of it, that landed on them, for them to huddle together for warmth but there is no way they would have survived the night. It went down to minus four that night.
I never heard a peep out of him.
He did it because he knew it would upset me. I won't start to list the stuff he used to get up to but this is the first time it involved another living creature. I had no idea he was an actual psychopath.
A month later, I waited until he went back to work and took the babies back in a carrier to try and draw the mother cat out. It took three journeys doing this as she was semi feral but on this third attempt, but I was able to grab her and I kept her and her babies for their natural span.
I knew he was an asshole and I had left him a few times over his overstepping. I knew I was being treated badly but that night something snapped and I 'saw' him and his petty behaviour, realised that he was an actual psychopath and just decided I was done.
As an older adult now and learning so much more about people, I think I might have ended up dead if I had stayed with him as his behaviour was gradually escalating.
So @SpidersAreShitheads you are not pathetic. You were learning. I can spot 'em a mile off now though.