Ive read a few posts where they say even when they are being nice it’s calculated and they don’t mean it. It seems like thats a lot of pre calculated effort on their part. Daughter repeats to me daddy said he did nothing wrong, he bought you nice things etc so he says he’s good and mummy was bad for breaking up the family amongst lots of other things.
Re this specifically. There's a very unhelpful idea that abusers are some kind of "bad person" who is somehow easy to spot. They they deliberately think "How can I harm X?" and then they go about it. And often get some pleasure from it.
Some are like that.
Some not so much. You said that your ex needed to be adored (basically) and forgot you were an individual human. Well that's abuse! But it's done subconsciously. His drive to be adored was likely so strong, that it dominated him, literally drove him (and still does). He didn't sit rubbing his hands together gleefully that he'd harmed you, but that drive was satisfied by you being harmed and he didn't feel badly about it, because it brought him comfort because the drive was satisfied. A bit like scratching an itch does.
But a good way to look at whether behaviour is abusive in an intimate relationship is to look at how both parties are impacted. And instead of abusive behaviour, use the word "damaging". If you have one partner who is pretty much fine and the other is really struggling because of the fine one's behaviour, then there's an imbalance. They're supposed to be equals, supporting each other and wanting the best for each other able to trust each other with their welfare. If the fine one doesn't help the struggling one, doesn't try to alter how they do things, or say straight up, "I'm not going to change, so I guess we aren't compatible" then it immediately indicates that at a basic level, they don't care about the other's suffering, because they're ok. You cannot be a life partner to someone, focus on yourself, pretend you're not, not feel uncomfortable at their struggling because of you, and be treating them in a way other than damaging. In the short term it may not be too harmful. Living with someone like that long term is very, very damaging.
Is it abuse? Well, in my opinion yes, because they're harming someone for their satisfaction. It may be a grey area if the struggling one never says they're struggling. As soon as they do, and they say why though, if the fine partner either carries on as usual or pretends to change just to keep her around for longer, then it's unequivocally abuse to me. There's no denying they know their behaviour is harming the other then. I'm not talking about physical things as that's more obvious.
For my kids, I say people can do good things and bad things. Everybody does a mix of things. But we all have responsibility for our own behaviour. If we think shouting isn't a good action, we shouldn't do it ourselves. We can learn how to do something else instead, because we are in control of ourselves. I don't say their father did X & Y and I don't criticise him. I try to give them the tools to make up their own mind about things they see him do and also counter anything he says about me.