Like : I never thought I would be intimidated by you. even though I can understand it ( I'm being intimidated by you or you intimidated me and I never thought about you intimidating me ). Would here is not subjunctive/conditional/ or past right?, so that's what we call Idiomatic english ''would'' here is just to complete the sentence? like here too ''I never thought you would do that''( you did something and I never thought about you doing that something).
I can't place would in any tense here.
Best Answer
Compare:
The first sentence describes the speaker's current feelings about the future. The second sentence describes the speaker's past feeling about the future.
When describing a past-thought about the future "will" changes to "would" (so we replace the incorrect "I never thought I will be..." with the correct "I never thought I would be..."