the zurkie show - you're being used by them

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

they don't love you like you love them.sending you lots of love and peaaaaaaace!https://linktr.ee/thezurkieshow

They don't see a future with you. And it's not that they don't like you. They like you a lot. It's just that they like you right now. You're not a part of their future. You're a part of their present because what they need in the present is just somebody to care. It's just somebody to show some kind of interest someone to use. You're being used.

Here, one second. It's not fair that somebody is taking time out of your life, out of your day, to play with you. You're a toy. They know that when they call, you answer. They know that when they're sad, you can cheer them up. But it doesn't take away from the fact that they're using you and you're on the receiving end. You deep down maybe don't know that, but I'm going to try to convince you that you're better than just being used. You should actually have the freedom to decide if you want to be with this person or not. Being used is being let on.

It's being given false promises, and it's being given basically loopholes to go through in order to be a part of somebody's life, whether that is romantically or in a friendship. If you need to do a certain amount of things, you know in your mind that if I do X, Y, and Z, then this person will be happy with me and you don't do them automatically

because it is the standard you have on yourself and you would treat somebody else that same way. Congratulations. You're being used. I know you don't want to admit it because it's uncomfortable to admit that somebody that you have convinced loves you, you have convinced is so good for you,

actually does not care. I know this because I've been used. Not once, not twice. but many times and it hurts it hurts realizing that everything you thought mattered doesn't really matter that much because everything that you convinced yourself was the foundation of the relationship that you had built with this person that you were so attracted to it's built on the idea that it's conditional entirely conditional and once those conditions stop being met, it's gone. It's gone. There's nothing more to that

relationship. How do you stop yourself from being used? Well, first, okay, it's being honest. It's looking at whatever situation you have right now and realizing, wait a minute, this is not an equal relationship. This is a relationship where somebody is taking advantage of me, plain and simple. They know how to manipulate my emotions. They know how to make me feel like I'm not doing enough. Like I need to constantly wow them. I need to constantly impress them in order for them to just give me like a base level of respect that every person should get. You also know because you feel it deep down. It's just you kind of hide that feeling away. You don't you don't really acknowledge it because that would mean that all of the hard work that you've spent trying,

trying and trying to get this person to see you the way that you see them is meaningless. You can't change somebody's predetermined opinion on you. Yourself. I mean, you can do everything in your power. You can show the best version of yourself. You can try to explain to them, hey, you know, when you only call me when you, when you only call me, you need something. When you only interact with me when you feel down because you're talking to the guy you've told me not to worry about and he's making you feel emotions you're not

comfortable with and instead you come to me for comfort, you are using me. Need a vehicle that isn't afraid to make a splash? That's the Volkswagen Touse. Capable and confident the Volkswagen Touse is fit for everyday life. Nimble in traffic, agile and tight spots and still spacious enough for weekend getaways, while available for motion all-wheel drive gives confidence in rain and snow. The capable taos, you deserve more confidence. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SuvW, German engineered for all.

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story takes off. I am your emotional play thing. I'm not being regarded as somebody who is in this relationship and matters the same way that you matter to me. It's odd. When you acknowledge that fact, you need to address it. And this is really where you're going to see what is this situation, you know, going to turn into. Because oftentimes when you... address somebody that you feel like you are being used by, their first inclination is to

gaslight you. That is just what happens sometimes, at least in my experience, that's what's happened. It doesn't mean that you're wrong. Don't, don't for one second think that your emotions and what you're going through is wrong. It's not. Sometimes people just don't really know that they're using you until you bring it up and they actually, if they, they're mature enough and they've done the self-reflecting after that conversation, they'll come back around and be like, you know what, this was messed up. I'm sorry, I treated you in this way. This is not right.

I need to treat you better. I need to be more engaged in our friendship, our relationship. I need to stop relying on you to hold my emotional baggage. Maybe I need to check in my emotional baggage somewhere else. Or maybe I need to deal with it. That's usually the case. You got to deal with it, man. But let's say the conversation doesn't go as planned,

and instead you are left with a bunch of wordsmithing, a bunch of explanations and a bunch of, well, when you do this, you make me feel this way. What? Really. When I don't reply to your text within one hour, I make you feel less cared for, even though I will text you and you will leave me on delivered the whole.

day. How does that make, make that make sense? When you're being used, it doesn't make sense. Because when you're used, there's no regard. There's no respect. There's no love. It's transactional. They, in their mind, are being provided a service. You are filling their emotional void. you are their entertainment. You are their thing that at the end of the day they can forget about because they know they have something else. Now it's the hard part. You've acknowledged that you're being used

and you're looking for a solution. You're looking for a way to stop this. Are you ready? You need to end it. The relationship, the friendship, the situation ship, you need to end it. And ending it oftentimes looks like stepping away. And it hurts because that means that you don't have this pool of emotions that you're used to

swimming through. You're always an anxious wreck. You're always trying, you know, running to the next situation that you can find, the next thing that makes you feel something. But oftentimes, we think that feeling anxious all the time and feeling uncomfortable, that means that you have the butterflies of love in your stomach. That's not what love should feel like. Love should feel effortless.

It should feel like you are being considered at every time of the day and night. Day and night. What? What? But if you're being used, that's not the case. What's actually happening is you're probably in a lot of stress all of the time. Because it's a lot of upkeep. It's kind of like being in a relationship where you're being used.

You have to be a gardener of this really, you know, overgrown, like urban decay house. And you have to just maintain it all the time and things are growing all the time. and it's not in a tasteful way. It just looks bad, and you have to constantly take out tools, you know, put out fires, only to realize that this place is going to overgrow anyways. And maybe you're not meant to try to make it perfect and try to make it beautiful.

Maybe the best thing you can do as the gardener for yourself is to step away and let everything overgrow because maybe that's what it's meant to be like. When I realized I had autonomy over the relationships in which I was being used, I realized that, yeah, it would be uncomfortable to step away, but I owed it to myself to do that. I had disrespected myself to a point where I just thought that that was not possible, that I would always be in relationships where I would need to impress the other person all of the time. but the truth is, no. You deserve more. You always have deserved more.

Maybe you just didn't believe that, but you do deserve more. You deserve to be in something where you feel like your emotions are heard. They matter. And it doesn't feel like you are putting in 80, 99% of the effort. Only for somebody to just merely acknowledge that you exist and play with you some more, you're being used. Stepping away looks like taking time for yourself.

Stepping away looks like telling somebody. Not not even having, you know, being open to having a conversation, but telling them you are using me. I feel used. Maybe that's not the case. But you know what? I'm stepping away. I need time for myself. I need to figure

things out. And yeah, you know, when you kind of get in this conversation, what oftentimes happens is somebody who knows what they're doing and is good at manipulating, they will try to bring you back. They will try to keep you because you are valuable to them. You know, you are a tool to them. So they want to keep you for as long as they can and they can make so many false promises and make you think, no, no, no, no, I will treat you differently. This was, I was just in a rough place. No, no, no, I will break up with this person. I've told you I was going to break up with to be with you,

even though I don't want to date you. We would just be like a thing. No, I'm going to do that. You just need to give me time. You just need to trust me. Oh, you don't trust me. No. No.

I do trust you. I trust that you're going to use me. You know why? Because I'm being used by you. And that's all you've been able to show me. You haven't been able to. Show me clearly that you are somebody worthy of being trusted because when I brought up all my qualms, when I brought up all of the things that I disagree with for some reason it always comes back to me. How is that fair? It's not fair. You're being used. When you step away from somebody who has manipulated you into thinking that you're just doing everything wrong, into thinking that this relationship is important to you, even though it's not even the relationship that's important. It's the fulfillment of needs. You have become a caretaker in some

kind of way. You're not required to take care of anybody other than yourself. It's good if you can take care of a significant other. You should want to do that. You should want to take care of your family 100% and your friends and the people that you love. But if somebody is getting upset at you because you cannot meet their needs perfectly. I'm sorry, you're being used. You're being used. And the way in which they see you is disproportionate to the way in which you think they see you.

They don't respect you the same way. They don't love you the same way. You are a tool. You are a tool for them. To feel better, to feel entertained, that's all you are. And it hurts. It hurts, man, because you want to feel like there's more. You want to feel like there's a level of pride that you have over relationships in your life.

There's a certain level of passion that you have, you know, being with other people and being able to spend important moments of your life with other people. And when you look back at all of that and realize, they did not care that entire time and they were using me and they knew that they were using me. It hurts. And that's why I think a lot of people stay in these kind of dynamics. And that's why I stayed in a lot of these dynamics because I did not want to admit to myself that it hurt. And that, you know, it wasn't where I wanted it to be. It was, it was, there were a lot of things that needed to change for it to be there.

But it's painful. Because after you do realize that you're being used, then it creates more questions for you to ask. Have I been used my entire life? Have people been using me my entire life? Have I just been able to have my own sense of self this entire time? Have I just been defined by the people around me? And what they thought I, you know, the person they thought I was,

I just went with that. But I never actually developed my own backbone and my own identity. And listen, the truth of the matter is on a bigger scale, we're being used all the time. We're being used to funnel, you know, certain ideologies and certain ideas. And I really urge you to try and think for yourself. It starts with your relationships. It starts with yourself.

Sometimes you even use yourself. You know that a habit is bad for you. You know that there's something you don't want to do. And you do it anyways because there's a part of you that wants the dopamine. There's a part of you that is craving some kind of negative feeling and you want to give it the fuel that you know you shouldn't give it. But something is telling you you're not good enough to ignore it. You're not strong enough. to tell yourself, okay, even if I make this mistake, that doesn't define me.

But that is a belief. That's a deep-rooted belief. That's not reality. You are strong enough. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the Orange One. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon.

Welcome aboard Via Rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and sip. Play. Post. Taste. View and enjoy. Via Rail, love the way. You are strong enough to think for yourself. You are smart enough to have the solution to this issue that you have. You are. I know you are. And you are smart enough and strong enough and capable enough to walk away from somebody when you know you're being used.

Because you don't deserve to stay there. You don't deserve to just be like, okay, I guess this is what it is and this is what it will always be. No, it doesn't have. have to be that. You have made it hard on yourself to change, to do something for yourself. And I understand because I have done that time and time again. I still do it. But at some point, you need to take that first step into being uncomfortable. You need to tell yourself, okay, no more. And yeah, you'll make mistakes. And yeah, it'll happen again. It does. You know,

there's recently, you know, in my life I've realized, dang it, I'm being used. Like, I don't actually think these thoughts are like, this relationship isn't good for me. This person just sees that I have something that they want. So they're using me for it. They don't actually care how I'm doing. I'm just like, I don't know. I'm just like a soundboard for them. When in reality, I'd like to be more. I'd like to be, you know, there for them. I'd like to, I'd like to, I'd like that. I'd like them to be interested in me, but they're not. And I can't expect them to be, you know, I have to find somebody who is interested in me. And I have to spend my time with somebody who does like me for who I am, not for the person they think I am, for who I am. Being intentional about how you

move forward and setting these boundaries, you are going to be able to live an experience for the first time as an adult, as who you are right now, where you will feel in control. That's really special. That's really special. It's kind of like painting something your entire life. It's kind of like, you know, when you're used, you're on this assembly line in a ceramic plant where you have to paint this European-style bowl and your job, your entire life, is to paint it in the same way and do the same stroke and all of a sudden you realize wait a minute I can do more than this and I don't just deserve to do this one thing I can do a lot more and instead you are given a warehouse with a canvas in the middle now it's your job to figure out what paint you want to

put on the canvas now it's your job to figure out wait a minute do I even want to paint or do I want to use this warehouse to do something else do I want to use this warehouse to be a sculpture To do sculpture, right? Be a sculptor, is what I was trying to say. The freedom you get from realizing that you don't have to be confined to the people around you, the freedom that you get realizing that you are more than this toxic situation ship, the freedom that you get realizing that you have the agency and you have the choice to not be used by the people around you. There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding that you the perfect car can help you get the most out of life.

Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road, and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams, or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going, start your search at ototrater.ca, Canada's car marketplace. It is the best freedom that you can have because it is something that is genuinely in your control. And sure, there are certain situations where, you know, you have a dynamic with a family member, where the family member is using you. Absolutely. It happens. But I would argue the quicker that you notice it, the quicker that you understand, this isn't right. I don't like this. And I'm going to set boundaries. The sooner you're going to see that change. The sooner you're actually going to be able to repurpose that energy that you've spent in these terrible dynamics. And you're going to be able to see that change. The sooner you're actually going to be able to repurpose that energy that you've spent in these terrible dynamics. And,

use it for people that are not going to use you. They're going to treat you like the human being that you are. They're going to treat you like the person that deserves love, that deserves appreciation and deserves respect in their life. Zerke's show, don't let yourself be used. It's hard because sometimes you don't even know what that looks like until after the fact, after you do some heavy reflection, and maybe this has made you realize, wait a minute, some of these relationships they're using me. It's not actually for my benefit. It's harming me.

Okay, that's great. I'm happy that we've come to that conclusion. That is such a good thing. Let's not sit there and be like, oh, man, I'm in my woes. I was running through the six with my woes. Okay. Let's do something about it. All right, I'm in this pit, but there's a way I can climb out.

There's actually a way. that I can support myself. There's a way that I can realize, all right, I'm not going to let this friend just hit me up every time he's bored. I'm going to take that energy I would spend with that friend and I'm going to invest it in this person that's always checking in on me. That's always like, hey, you know, I'd love to hang out. I'd love to, I'd love to be there for you. Because you only have so much energy in your life. You only have so much energy in your day today. Don't let that energy go to waste. Don't let that energy just go to waste. Don't let that energy just go to people who don't care about you.

Don't let that energy get wrapped up in a toxic situation ship because that is how you are used. And that time and that energy is something you will never get back. Use it wisely and use it the way that you want to use it. Zerky Show. Today's episode of The Zirky Show was filmed in beautiful Austin, Texas here at Mount Banal. If you are ever in Austin, come to Mount Benel with your hinge date or solo.

Solo. It's very, very nice, especially during a sunset. Did you know that the Zirky Show is everywhere you go? That is correct. You can watch it. You can scroll it. You can stream it. The choice is yours.

If you want to tap in, tell a friend, this is the best way to tap in. Do the things that bring you joy. Eat some good Sicilian pizza. Go out, bask in the sun. Go for a walk. Play some footy with your pals. And more than anything, just enjoy this existence, Zirky show because it goes by so quickly.

If you're trying something new, just know that I believe in you. And as always, you know the drill. I'm sending you lots of love and be. B'i. Frozen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play. Feel the fun with Play-Ojo.

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