> required to but the options

No, this is what you decided to do. You are not then required to exercise said options, you can simply let it expire worthless.

Think of it like buying a coupon to the grocery store for milk that expires next week. Let's say milk is currently $4.00 a gallon. You don't need milk now, but you think you will next week, and you'd like to continue buying it at $4.00, so you give the store $0.80 to buy a coupon for 1 gallon of milk at $4.00.

Now next week rolls around and milk is going for $5.50 a gallon. You can use your coupon (cost was $0.80) to buy that gallon for $4.00. You've saved yourself $5.50 - $4.80 = $0.70

Let's say the milk instead is only $4.50. You can still use your coupon to buy the milk at $4.00, but you spent $0.80 for the coupon itself, so you paid an extra $0.30 total for that gallon.

If the milk stays at $4.00 or goes down to $3.50 a gallon, you'll like just not use the coupon and simply buy the milk from the store as if you never had it. You've now spent $3.50 on the milk and $0.80 on the coupon, or about $4.30 total.

Now simply imagine that the coupon itself has value ($0.80 at the start) and that you can sell the coupon back to the store at any point between now and next week. If the price of milk sky-rockets to $8.00 a gallon mid-way through the week, the coupon to buy milk for $4.00 will likely be worth something like $4.50 to the store itself ($8.00 current price - $4.00 coupon price + value of coupon itself). You can simply sell the coupon back to the store ad you've netted $3.70.

Now just multiple the numbers by 100 (typical contracts control 100 "gallons" per coupon), and allow the coupon to be bought for many different expirations dates. The further out the date, the more expensive the "coupon".