There are some things you just never threaten to take from people. One is their kids, but right up there is their pets.

In fact, if you dare, you usually really end up regretting it.

OP has come through a tough time in their life to really come to grips with who they are.

Early in my teens I tumbled into a deep depression, and struggled for a long time.

Around 8 years ago, after I broke through my depression, thanks to therapy and medication, I also figured out I am transgender.

Thinking that they’ve found a partner they can trust, they settle in and buy a house.

Fast forward half a year, I met my now ex, let’s call them Ex. Within the first week of dating, I poured everything out.

I told Ex I wasn’t ready to socially transition at all, mind you I only recently got a decent paying job, still lived with my parents, etc.

Ex seemed very supportive, and assured me they have no problem whatsoever with me being who I am, and so 4 years passed when we finally decided to buy a house together.

Ex’s parents however were loaded, and they made a nice donation to Ex, by splitting up their savings between siblings, when we told them about our plans.

At this point we also discussed, that if things were to go sideways, we’d just friendly part ways and split everything back to each other’s original investment.

We made some offers and ended up buying a nice place, in between our two places of work. Since I had a car, commuting for me was easy, but for Ex it was more difficult.

They had to take public transport every day for 1 hour there and 1 back.

And then things started to go badly.

We adopted two cats as we were both animal people and COVID just hit, so I wouldn’t feel so lonely when working from home while Ex was out working on site.

However, the high I was riding of finally being independant, and being able to live my own life was short lived.

See, my job requires me to be on-call for several days of the month (usually 7, 14 if a colleague is ill). My phone would ring in the middle of the night, waking us both up.

We never really argued before, but I recall this as the breaking moment.

Ex started acting in a way that i’d already seen before, my parental home.

In situations like this, I learned that agreeing is usually the quickest way to end confrontation, and so I slept on the couch not even a month after moving into my own house.

Things escalated from there, after a few more months, I was doing all the work around the home, I was the only one caring for the cats. If I didn’t do it, nobody would.

Besides that, I wasn’t free to be who I wanted, I received mean comments when I did something gender affirming (for example, a new haircut.), note that at this point I was not ready to come out yet. I created an entire plan and timeline for myself.

Gauntlets were thrown, but once their partner threatened to keep the cats, OP was done.

During the course of 2022, Ex did their best to keep me down, but I wouldn’t let them. At some point Ex decided it would be easier to give up. We had a talk where we agreed we’d mutually break up, and divide everything fairly.

I had every intention to keep the house, as my cats got used to it, I made some friends in the area and my work was relatively close.

As Ex had no intention to keep the house (commuting to work while their parents lived in the town they worked in) we went on from the assumption that I would keep the house.

One evening, somewhere in November last year, we had an argument over the money that I’d have to pay them.

It started small as Ex had listed a broken vacuum cleaner on the list of items, and I started asking questions if we could scrap it.

The argument evolved and Ex threatened to take my cats from me as part of the deal. This was the hill I was willing to die on, never threaten to take away my cats.

I stopped arguing and started calling a friend, as I needed some support. Ex knocked my phone out of my hands, picked up their phone, called their parents and put them on speaker phone, the words Ex spoke, will haunt me forever.

“OP is trans and wants to be a /insert gender/”.

They were playing hardball.

My first instinct I won’t share, but you can imagine. After calling a helpline I calmed down and I gathered my courage, and called up everybody I could think of and told them. I wasn’t going to let Ex win this one.

An hour after Ex’s initial phone call, their dad showed up and started threatening lawyers, and spouting things like that I was mentally ill, I would never be a /insert gender/, and that they would do whatever it cost to get the house from me or leave me with as little as possible.

Fast forward a week or so, Ex sent over a new version of the proposed financial resolution, the amount that I had to pay Ex was increased by a significant amount. I wanted this to be over quickly so I just agreed, as long as Ex would cover the costs of the notary, as their amount was the maximum I could borrow from the bank (they did not know this).

Ex did not agree, and hiked their price again. Stating that if I don’t agree, the price will just continue to go up.

Ex made an entire excel spreadsheet detailing their investment as well as mine. What I noticed was that, in the excel, everything was tied together. If Ex hiked their price, the price to buy me out, was getting hiked as well.

In the end, it was enough for them to know how much money the other person had lost in the process.

And that’s when I realised I had them by the ******.

Aee, they were blindsided and thought I would do anything to not move to my parents.

I argued back an forth and played dumb at one point, just to drive up the price, the email stated that Ex forgot to calculate how much more the house was worth now than 2 years ago, and hiked the price by 20%, as per usual Ex copy pasted their calculations and said “This is the price you pay me, or this is the price I pay you.” and that’s when I took my chance.

I agreed to let Ex buy me out for the amount specified, and in my reply also stated that all previous negotiations of who pays the notary would also be valid (the buyer). I ended my email with “I don’t have to remind you that an agreement over email is just as valid as a contract”.

I pushed them to contact a notary within a reasonable time, or I would seek legal counsel to force them to pay my share, fast forward 2 weeks and I receive a call from the notary that they are working on the deed and need my details, approx a month later it would be ready to sign, I double checked the numbers, it was all there, and shortly after it was signed.

The reason I’m posting this now, instead of at the end of 2022, is because like I said, Ex didn’t want to keep the house.

It went up for sale immediately, approx €40.000 above market value.

I had the house favorited and checked periodically, every so often it would drop in price and receive the “new” sticker on the website.

It dropped approx €60.000 before yesterday in total. When it was finally sold.

I calculated the damages based on their handy excel sheet, and if we assume the initial fair split like we agreed 3-4 years ago.

My ex lost about €40.000 of their own investment, not only in buying me out, but notary costs, taxes, etc. If we assume the split I initially agreed on to get it over with, my Ex lost out on €80.000.

I am now living my life to the fullest, with friends and an amazing partner who is truly supportive. Lesson learned however, I bought a new place for myself (funded by Ex), I will never share ownership of ever again.

never threaten to take away my cats.

Does Reddit love their lowkey tactics? Let’s find out!

The top comment is just glad OP is living their best life now.

Cats can sense stress, after all.

No cat owner is chill about a threat like this.

This person did a helpful tl;dr.

Everyone wonders what their face looked like at the end.

Y’all, I love this for this person.

Talk about being reborn in so many ways.

If you thought that was an interesting read, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.