PSA: it took me 8 weeks to figure out why my pothos kept dying and it was the pot, not me
So I bought this golden pothos about a year ago at a nursery in Sacramento and it started dropping leaves within a month. I tried everything, moved it to three different windows, cut back watering to every 10 days, misted it like crazy, even bought a $40 moisture meter. Nothing worked. It kept going downhill until I had maybe four sad leaves left. Then a guy at my local plant swap in January asked one simple thing, does your pot have a drainage hole. Turns out the cute ceramic pot I got at a thrift store had zero holes and I was basically drowning the poor thing the whole time. I drilled a hole in the bottom, switched to a chunkier mix with perlite, and within 3 weeks it pushed out five new leaves. Eight weeks of guessing and it was a $0 fix. Anyway if your plant is sulking, check the pot first. What is the dumbest thing that took you forever to figure out with your plants?
The "dumbest thing that took you forever to figure out" for me was realizing that the pot sitting inside a decorative cachepot counts as no drainage at all, even when the inner pot has holes. Water collects in the gap between the two pots and the roots sit in it, which is basically the same drowning you described but sneakier because you never see the puddle. Took me losing two good ferns before I started emptying the cachepot after every watering.