Mercenaries

It is astonishing how badly one can be made to feel without physical damage or death being involved.

Imagine you have an enemy, imagine this enemy was your friend. Imagine that you decide to take one for the team and patch things up despite your continuing to hurt mightily. Imagine that this enemy begins to speak to you one day, and you get excited, you think ‘hey maybe I’m not the only one trying for peace’, imagine they are so good at it that they just talk to you for like 3 minutes and you imagine for those three minutes a future without animosity. And then the person makes a request of you and it becomes clear that the whole conversation was a sham, a prelude to the request.

Suddenly you’re made to feel used and worthless, and worse you have no one to blame because it’s human nature. No one actually likes anyone else. They only like what the person provides. All love is conditional, all relationships are exchanges.
The lines between partner, victim, family, friend, lover, customer, are only drawn by the nature of those provisions, and the effort required to provide them, and how badly each service is needed. For example if a guy you know is really funny, and he doesn't even have to try, you will hang around him because laughing is fun, and now let’s say you have a really nice house, so he hangs around you for the comfort, this could be called a friendship. But deep down, it isn’t. Because if you lose the house and he stops being funny one will tire of the other.

How is one expected to deal with that? Why is it always on the victim to adapt?