There is such a thing as exaggerating the hell out of somebody. When we don’t feel that great about ourselves and we also on some level recognise that we’re putting up with less than palatable carry-on, we pump people up. It’s like, I know that you’re not the actual centre of the universe but if I treat you as if you are, you will feel so good that you will love, validate and appreciate me. What possible reason would you have to leave me when I’m willing to make you look this good no matter how you behave?
When we truly love somebody, we don’t need to exaggerate them. If anything, we put people on pedestals and keep going on about how great they are when we’re trying very hard to hold on to an illusion, after all, if somebody is truly that great, why aren’t we living that greatness with them? It’s not because we’re “not good enough”; it’s because who we think they are isn’t real just as the magnitude of our so-called flaws isn’t real either. We protest too much.
We tend to go on and on and on about how great someone is to about the same degree that we go on and on and on about how ‘un-great’ we are.
We roll out descriptors like the Best Guy/Woman Ever or The Goddess or Best Male Friend or whatever, because if we didn’t refer to them as this, we’d have to admit that we’ve been putting up with some pretty bad treatment plus we’d also have to let go of our ideas about this person, admit who they truly were and are, get into the present, grieve and begin to rebuild our lives with a kinder, more compassionate view.
It’s why when we’re in a casual relationship – oxymoron alert – or we’re involved in an affair – exorcism alert because it will bring up every ugly feeling or thought we’ve ever pushed down – we claim that they’re our “best friend” or like I did, “Best Male Friend”. We forget that we weren’t ever really friends in the first place or that if we actually delved under the hood of the friendship and examined what it contained, we’d see that it’s very imbalanced with a passenger and a driver, where it’s effectively all on one person’s terms and reliant on us pumping them up by extension of our fawning over them and insisting on our love no matter how badly we’re treated.
This so-called friendship allows us to be kept on a string and we end up playing armchair therapist, ego stroker, chauffeur, nurse, bank, bed partner and more in an effort to show how dedicated we are.
We claim that we know this person really well, that we have an intimate relationship and that we know things about them that no one else knows, except for that they also don’t tell us stuff either and we’re often the last to know when it comes to information that would certainly cause us to question our allegiance to them. They neglect to mention that they’re sleeping with other people, or that they really are not interested in a relationship, or that they’re having a baby, or that their idea of friendship is very different to ours.
When this person is no longer in our life, we continue calling them The Best Guy/Woman Ever because all of our hopes and expectations are tied up in them so it’s as if our last chance saloon is gone, but what we’re really doing is delaying letting go so that we don’t have to face forward. We don’t want to look ourselves in the mirror. We don’t want to get to know us. We don’t want to know where the pain comes from (the past). We don’t want to admit that we think of this person in the way that we do because we saw them as a chance to become special at last. We’re afraid that if we admit the truth then it will mean that we’re really not good enough because we were only thinking of us as having worth when we were in the relationship.
One of the dangers of getting involved in these faux friendship situations (casual sex and mistreatment masquerading as legit friendship) is that each party makes a dangerous assumption:
It does hurt when we’re not appreciated, respected, cared for and loved by a person who we feel as if we’ve invested a great deal in and who let’s be real, our whole dream is banking on– and it is a dream because at some point we’ve stopped being real with us about who this person is (an ordinary human being) and what we’re putting up with. We have to examine our motivations because on some level we exaggerate people because we want them to do the same with us. We put up with poor treatment because we hope it will activate their conscience and cause them to do better which would also cause us to be made the exception to the rule. We feel cheated because in our mind, we would not treat someone who behaved like us in the same way. We also feel cheated because we feel as if we have met all of the conditions to be chosen or for this person to act differently and they haven’t. We then feel owed or we feel bad because it feels as if we’re “not good enough”. We feel that in spite of doing all of this stuff, we just didn’t cut it.
The problem is how we see the problem. A friendship is a mutual relationship between friends. Sure, we can be friends with someone we love but once romantic inclinations are in the mix, it is not a friendship. It’s also not a friendship when one person sees the other as a means to an end, even if they won’t admit it. No friendship truly prospers from one person dining out on the fringe benefits of what the other party provides and a true friend is not comfortable with a friend mistreating his or herself in order to keep the friendship going.
Also, we have to start asking ourselves whether we see someone as being that special because relative to other experiences, it was like getting a cracker in the desert after not eating for several months. When we’re starved of affection and attention both from us and others, a crumb can seem like The Best Loaf Ever.
It’s incredibly unfair to judge us based on a perspective gained from exaggerating a person. When we put people on a pedestal, the only place to look at us is from above and the more we pump them up, the more we shrink ourselves. We have to ask ourselves why we can’t be great too. Why can’t we?
We’re looking for something out of this friendship that can’t be gotten – by invalidating us as well as showing lack of respect, appreciation, trust, care and love for us in our efforts to be a ‘friend’ to this person or to exaggerate them, we’re creating a much larger void. They are wrong to behave as they do but we have to draw a line and stop putting us in the front line of pain and hoping to get paid back with love. We must be a friend to us first and learn where to positively invest our good qualities. These situations we put ourselves in are not love never mind friendship.
If you have a Best Guy/Woman Ever in your life, they’re just not that special that you have no worth without them. Stop pumping them up!
Your thoughts?
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Amen sister! Thanks again.
I’ve just started dating another guy I met online (after promptly discarding the last one b/c I saw big red flags). I’m already putting this person on a pedestal. I do this with almost every guy I date. I just can’t anymore. I have got to look at what you write above, and really think about this “We have to ask ourselves why we can’t be great too. Why can’t we?”. I have a tendency to feel assured when not in a relationship b/c I’m not comparing myself or putting the person on a pedestal. I have to learn to be in a relationship and maintain by sense of greatness in the beginning (and beyond), so I don’t go nuts and begin to devalue/judge myself upon whether or not I’m getting a call or a text every day, or when I think I should be getting one. Gotta be patient reading the signs, and admit the truth about the person.
This is so true
I have just managed to finally leave a relationship with huge red flags that I continuously ignored so that I could keep believing that I had finally met this great guy and how could someone so great possibly really like me so I started moulding and changing myself to try to fit my ideas of what he wanted. It was all projection and not much listening. I remember him saying to me perhaps 3 dates in or so … ‘I am a bit of a git’. ( there where many more examples like this )
My ears should have pricked at that point and I should have actually taken this information in rather then whitewash it so I could carry on believing how brilliant he was and totally devaluaing myslef in the process.
I am now filled with an incredible amount of deeply buried rage and resentment after pushing myself down to something smaller and smaller over the period of 3 years.
My one but of advice is really listen to what he says at the start. I wish I had
Celina,
But you are listening now and that is what matters. One of your comments stood out to me. You mentioned feeling as though you were beneath him. I remember thinking, “No handsome, charming man like him would ever like or want me in my wildest dreams, so if I can hang onto him then I have it made, that will be my happiness” with my ex. The problem was not that I needed to match myself to ‘his level’ (and what a joke; he’s a pretty big loser in actuality), it was that I did not see myself and my own value clearly. I was in La La land surrounded by a bunch of superficial candy clouds. Get over this guy and move onto something better. Much much better.
Take Care
xx
This hits me on **so** many levels. How do you know me so well?
Hi all,
It’s been a while since posted last. I’ve been on a dating break since last january, and finally doing what makes me happy…not what others want me to do. I hope I don’t have the ‘cracker in the desert’ reaction when I do decide to date again. I have a history of falling for unavailable men and emotional train wrecks. Knowing this, i still have made mistakes. Hoping and planning that next time, I get it right.
To me, my ex was God among man. Not good, not good, I know. But that’s how I felt about it so it must have been correct right? Nope. Totally wrong. He’s just a typical ol’ Mr Unavailable.
Woman to woman, if you are finding yourself exaggerating the men you date, I can recommend one thing above all: Nat’s book Mr Unavailable and the FallBack Girl. I’ve used many many of her resources and liked them all but my favorite is Mr Unavailable and the FallBack Girl. I recommend the paperback from Amazon. I have no interest in promoting Nat btw. I am that enthralled about it. It continues to save my life.
I just had a relationship implode, I had a clear role and some accountability so I can’t just play the victim and say he did this to me because I did it to myself. I was massively attracted to a man who was my “unicorn,” authority figure, he had a prominent career in our local community before retiring, was cited for heroism blah, blah, physically exactly what I look for. The red flags were there, early escalation to sexting while not spending much physical real world time together, his demand that I be patient when I suggested we actually get together and the fact that he referred to himself as a warrior. No, he was not married, I still cannot figure out if maybe he was in a relationship, a woman I work with who knows him said he was not seeing anybody else.
Anyway, we had a bad conversation in which I expressed some regret over the rush to sexting and wanted to step back because I felt silly and I presented it badly and in a very insecure manner. He wigged out and got hugely defensive and accused me of disrespecting him. I now think what he calls disrespect was me calling him on his shit, I just did it badly. Clearly, I am still somebody who does not handle emotionally uncomfortable conversations with skill.
The irony was that at some point he bragged that he remained or parted as “friends” with his previous relationships. He has been divorced a number of years longer than me so has had more relationships. Honestly, I find that super hard to believe unless his idea of parting friends consisted mainly of him declaring they were friends. There is no way in hell I want to be friends with this man, I was very attracted to him and the only way I am going to heal especially from the embarrassment of how I acted is to not see him and not “be friends”. I also ended an actual friendship with a man recently because I realized every single conversation we ever had was about him. He was a writer and a local actor and I would be happy to give him an award for most self absorbed person I ever met.
Ironically, my last relationship ended because I had zero attraction to the man and then he turned did something on our last date that was out of character compared to the others, he showed up drunk and I just said, nope can’t do it. I don’t want to be friends with him either.
I am struggling to find the middle ground on the attraction meter and on checking in early on how I feel when I am with somebody. Unicorn man made me “feel” excited largely I think because I was flattered he was attracted to me. The other man made me feel “meh” when I was with him and actually that made me feel bad for not liking him more. On the other hand I went out to dinner and a comedy show with friends on the weekend and mostly I was feeling like I was looking forward to hanging out with them and enjoying their company which frankly is what I want to feel with a man in a romantic connection.
Paula,
it is easier than you think. I was also always analyzing my thoughts and did not really listen to my intuition and moreover did NOT feel my feelings:
Attraction is very intuitive if you remove all the “shoulds”! Stop telling yourself you have to like everyone that “seems” to be interested. You will get to that point when your interest in that person is truly reciprocated as it is with friends. Don’t rush yourself into liking someone even though we want it so badly this time (speaking of me now!). Give it time. Chill out. Do your thing and be available to yourself and then give yourself permission to really feel what you feel , good or bad or in-between and then proceed accordingly. Natalie always says: People unfold and that goes both ways…I am not sure I like this person if I don’t know them- at least that is how attraction is working for me know and it is way way less confusing 🙂
Oh yeah, do I see myself in this post. Mostly I see my past self – vividly – when it comes to wanting that return on investment. Now it’s the friendship card. It’s the “consolation prize” for sticking it out as long as possible. Let’s face it – they only want to deal you the friendship card in the first place because they know they behaved like a jackass and this is their way of making themselves feel better. They wrongly assume it makes you feel better too. When one party (in this case, me) felt more than he did, friendship can’t work. It’s confusing and it’s disrespectful. The more distance I put between myself and him (and OMG was that hard) the better perspective I gained on what I’d been doing. I know now that the litmus test for being friends with an ex is this – would you ever go on vacation together with him and his new girlfriend or wife? No? Then you can’t be friends.
I just don’t understand how you see my thoughts so accurately.
I dated a guy long distance for a year. Just when I believed that things were moving to a new level he stopped contacting me.
I got smart and figured out he might have reunited with his ex fiancee.
I googled both of their names and a wedding website popped up. It talked about their plans, etc.
It turns out that they never broke up. The wedding plans were going as designed, two years earlier.
I was furious, as he flat out lied to get what he wanted. When we met I point blank asked if he had a wife, family or girlfriend. He did not hesitate to say no I am totally by myself.
I gave him a few harsh words, but stayed friends in the end. Why?I put him up on a pedestal because he’s handsome, and very very successful.
I put him above me thinking well I got slammed down by the best so it was easy to predict.
Thanks for bringing me back to earth.He’s a ruthless SOB who likely cut someone down to get where he is.
I am now in weekly therapy to deal with this and the AC who came along right after him.
Nat, your insights can change the quality of people’s lives
Another great article Nat! I put my ex on a pedestal all the time when we were together, even in front of him (ego stroke for him of course) I would always compliment him, tell him how nice he was, without even realizing i was doing it. I even bragged to my friends and parents about him. Turns out, it was all an act. He went from being this “god” of a guy to being an AC in a matter of minutes when he broke my heart and left me for someone else. What a gem! I was embarrassed afterwards when people would ask me about him.
I still find myself thinking of him as this great guy but I think I’m just clinging on to the good memories and this fantasy I had of him. There were little red flags here and there in the relationship that I didn’t pay attention to. I guess I didn’t really know who he was. No one is that great! Their true colors shine through eventually.
I needed to read this. Got “involved” with a guy a couple of years ago. He charmed me, gave me lots of attention and was so loving. He had broken up with a woman…or she had broken up with him. He stated she was 20 years younger than him and a model. He pursued me non stop. Then he got a little colder, and I became the pursuer, even paranoid. He got cold on me and his contact became less and less. We mostly had only sent texts to each other. Finally, I cut him off. A year later, I got a message from him. He had another break up with another woman and invited me on a trip with him. I told him that was too fast. We began talking again and he said he wanted to try again. I gave in. He sent me gifts, etc was so loving I thought maybe things had changed, that I had gotten the guy I always wanted, the true real him. About five months had passed and contact from him became less and less, I sometimes would not hear from him for a week. Then he would come back like nothing. We spent a two week vacation together and it was great, but I noticed he would compare me to many of his exes, that I wore too much makeup like some, etc. I also slept with him. When the vacation was over, he was warm and loving. A month later, he began to become distant again saying “I usually don’t talk to friends more than this anyways. I was so hurt and confused. He would ignore my messages and I would ask if we could have a conversation by talking, he would say he was in a bad place and that it wasn’t a good time. I finally flushed and blocked him on Facebook, etc. Please tell me I dodged a bullet. I don’t know what happened with this guy. He did the same thing he did the first time around. I’ve been taking it hard.
Nicole, you absolutely dodged a bullet. I doubt he was involved with someone 20 years younger. If he actually was, he’s extremely immature–both for doing it and talking about it after the fact! And claiming she’s a model while also telling you all about his many, many, many exes? Frankly, it sounds like he’s gay and deeply in denial about it.
My ex sounds like via “I’m friends with my exes/they were really nice/one was a dancer/actress/etc/many from exotic interesting cultures of the North”. What a load of bs. And to think we put up with such rubbish..a decent bloke would never ever brag about his exes in front of his current missus. I mean come on do we need more proof of them being completely self absorbed.
Definitely not worth an inch of your train of thought 🙂 I think we sometimes got or get so caught up in what they say -plus with our low self esteem- that we end up forgetting what normal behaviour is.
I don’t think you’ve dodged a bullet. I am absolutely certain. Deep down inside you know it too
Isit ok that I was scratching my head smiling when I read this post and started remembering all the ways in which I’d tell the world that my ex was such an amazing amazing guy, and it was always my fault for everything? In retrospect, how silly of me not to look at him in the real light of everyday, when I got to the point of shouting and falling apart in front of him just to elicit some sort of reply from him, but all I’d get is the silence treatment. It’s so strange how we really don’t pay attention to the way they are treating us? Boyfriends or friends who want to have some benefits..how much low self esteem do we have, to let them pull whatever they want on us while we just keep explaining and rationalising everything to ourselves and the world? I’ve learnt a lot from Nat’s posts, it’s as if someone cracked my head open and told me exactly how and why I was doing things. It’s so good to be aware of those issues now…I can’t get enough of reading this post over and over, admitting with no shame that yes, I was one of these people in my former relationship, and like everyone else I was invited to be friends still. But glad I cut off all contacts, removed his friends -a harem basically- from fb, I didn’t have him on fb as I didn’t ever in our two years together liked his posts (red flag anyone?) , I deleted his texts, emails and phone no. No point in re reading texts and mails as the more I’d read the more it felt like they were really empty words ..plain charm and a bit of narcissism. Or more. I used to praise him in front of my friends, his friends, my family, everyone who-d listen. Yet on a later read, I can’t understand why I didn’t see through the words. I’m not talking about those nice lovely thing people can say to each other when they are in love..I’m talking about the later on when the layers come off as when you peel an onion, and you get to see no backbone, no values in common and just a general lack of consideration for what you want and need. And yet we cling on to every hope they might turn out to be /return to who we thought they were at the beginning..when we actually didn’t know anything about them but just assumed that charm and big words and gestures are the proof a a good heart, a good solid set of morals and most of all, of that idea that if there is a magic person for us all who’ll come along and do magic tricks and by being so awesome socially appreciated successful handsome popular seemingly intelligent etc ,will make us be the same, will lift us from our unworthy-ness into worthiness. And they world will say lo and behold, if this awesome best person ever likes her/him…well then,they must be amazing by proxy! And ta dah, we-d get the approval of the whole world who-d not yet understood just how great we are until then. And then, maybe then, we-d start loving ourselves too. By proxy…
Well..time to face the music and love ourselves anyway, despite the world sticking on the side of that amazing best person, despite people still not getting the picture. Because they don’t matter that much ultimately, it’s what we really think of us that matters…how much we love and respect ourselves that matter. After the noise of the vox populi is quietened,we are left only with the honest voice of ourselves. And that’s the one we have to like, -even more- love, respect and appreciate enough to allow it not to be trampled on by anyone (including ourselves)
No more trying to be “amazing by proxy”. We are the amazing ones if we are at this stage, realising what’s happened and taking responsibility for our lives.
Rock on ladies.
I meant to say “rock on ladies and gentlemen!” <3
Sistah, you are singin’ my song — from start to finish, every verse, the chorus, the bridge, all of it! This was right on time and exactly what I needed to help me see “my Superman” as he’s been all along. I had placed him up on a pedestal that was so high, in my eyes he really could do no wrong. However, that all faded away after I learned that he secretly blabbed my shortcomings to our friends and disclosed very intimate matters that should’ve remained private. Although we mutually parted soon after, it took a very long time for me to truly realize that the man I fell so hard for, like Superman, never really existed at all.
The “vintage rose-colored glasses” are now officially shattered, and I thank you.
This really hit home! I spent ages waiting for a guy to fit me into his ‘busy schedule’ when he somehow found the time to attend his ex girlfriends birthday party. As well as waiting around for 3 days for a call to see him only to find out he decided to have a weekend to himself. He wouldn’t have told me if I hadn’t got so fed up and chased him. I started to become of those clingy people waiting for the smallest of crumbs. My opinion after those events and reading this have drastically changed. Time to pick myself up and dust off the dirt. Thanks Natalie 🙂
its like you have just described the last 3 months for me. And the truth is apart from my ex acting in a way as to show it is only friendship that is now wanted I’ve found myself acting out of character and wanting to do as much as i can and I even know now that we were great as an affair type of thing. We have two very different lives and the chance of us being together day to day was not likely and not worth the trouble and hurt it would have caused. That being said when we were alone things were great and I would like to keep being friends as weve known each other over 20 years I have realised from reading your thoughts that I dont know if thats possible. Things have been getting easier week after week as its now been 3 months its hard when its obvious to us both that we now dont do and talk about certain things so as not to fall back into bed it now has me thinking is it worth the effort and my thoughts change daily. In short wanted to say TY for letting me see what i have been doing and i now think that if we are to stay good friends then it has to be 50/50 otherwise I’m going to become down on myself for acting this way and then its not a friendship I want.
I think this paragraph was really important:
“We roll out descriptors like the Best Guy/Woman Ever or The Goddess or Best Male Friend or whatever, because if we didn’t refer to them as this, we’d have to admit that we’ve been putting up with some pretty bad treatment plus we’d also have to let go of our ideas about this person, admit who they truly were and are…”
I’m no psychologist, but that looks to me like a situation of strong self-justification after the fact. The more we put a not-so-great person up on a pedestal, the more we KEEP on wanting to put them on a pedestal, even if there is evidence that they’re not so great. It’s just too painful to admit that we were fooled, or that we fooled ourselves. We’d prefer to keep up the false fantasy, rather than face the pain and embarrassment of saying, “Okay, I was wrong about that person.”
It’s an ugly and self-perpetuating situation, and one that I hope nobody falls into.
It reminds me of the story of alias Marian Keech…check it out via Google. That was another situation where people preferred to keep up a false fantasy, rather than face a very embarrassing/painful truth.
Thank you for this post. Important ideas here.
Sand,
I really loved and related to the psychological input you had on this. Truth is I am the one who deluded myself into thinking my ex was some sort of God in order to distract myself from what really was going on inside me.
Your words are very much appreciated.
It took many hours after reading this post, but I finally at long last understood that I had been putting the man (my husband and creative partner of 17 years) I just divorced on a pedestal and making excuses for him all that time. While I still highly respect him as an artist and he does indeed have many admirable and lovable qualities, I had to utterly deplete myself down to nothing in order to sustain that relationship. No más!
Same applies for (in non-romantic situations) BEST boss, aunt, co-worker, neighbour, local dairy owner, fleeting stranger, therapist, priest, minister, agent, political figure, fireman, police, actors, talk show host, lawyer, doctor, janitor, teacher, family members, sports people etc etc etc. If anybody has done something that causes anyone to think oh gee/wow s/he is great then I would compliment on that particular deed/way/skill/talent with huge awareness in tow this does not mean that same person in their entire self to include other things they do (yes look at their other ways of going about doing stuff/acting) is also oh gee/wow also.
Also mutuality in any contextual relationship must come from my very self and that I’m not creaming off others’ goodness or demanding their goodness.
I’ve read this post twice now. I am no longer in angst over ACMM…he feels like total history at this point…and yes he still attempts to make contact, but we know ACs are like a bad case of indigestion…always repeating on you.
For those of us recovering from over-giving, self-awareness is so essential. “We have to draw a line and stop putting us in the front line of pain and hoping to get paid back with love.” Thanks for that line. It is SO very essential to understand that.
I cast almost anyone who showed me any interest – pseudo love interests, pseudo girlfriends – as the BEST ever. I was so happy/hungry to be acknowledged (!) – and I treated everyone as if they had shown me love care trust and respect my whole life…although in actuality I’d only known most of them for a half-a-minute. And inevitably, over time, an episode would happen where they treated me as horribly as they’d treat anyone else. I’d find I was not special.
But the upshot is, you don’t tell other people how you deserve to be treated. I have finally learned that it is up to ME to treat ME as I deserve to be treated. For a recovering co-dependent pleaser like me, it means heeding that inner discomfort. If I am doing something simply to be pleasing, STOP doing it.
I’m sure, in time, I will be able to hear my inner voice a lot more easily than I ever have.
Unfortunately, I am still stuck in this kind of sick “friendship”. He even broke up with his girlfriend because of me and we started some sort of relationship. In the beginning it was very nice and beautiful, but after a few months, I was not feeling respected and well and fights started. And I finished it. Maybe I had some bit of self-esteem at that point. But after that I started putting him on pedestal, I was feeling like I can’t live without him (and I have never felt about any guy like this before.) Maybe this is also due to the fact that everyone around me was telling me that we are so perfect together and I know how he still looks at me and cares about me. Or he does not care, I do not know anymore. Couple of months after the break up we started having sex again, but this was even more disrespectful, because it was just that, sex. I did not have anything else from him. That is over now, my decision again. I found myself in this article also because he wanted us to stay friends, because how can we live without each other etc etc. I am well aware that he is not my friend, but I can’t move away from him. There is also an additional problem, he is my colleague. Even when I try to think selfishly, it is not smart to completely cut him away from my life, because I will lose the contact with a lot of other people from work (when we hang out outside the working time, I mean, which was very often). And recently, although I still have no reason to think about it, I started killing myself with the thoughts of him finding another girlfriend. How am I suppose to go through that? (I know it is stupid to think about this in advance, but I can not help myself). Is my only solution to isolate myself from this whole group of people because they connect me with him? How do I move away from him when I see him every day? How do I recover? I was alone for some time before he came, a decision I made to work on my personal problems, everything that Natalie is talking about, and now after this with him, I just proved myself that I am emotionally fucked up, without any self esteem and self respect. And I am at even worse stage than I was before.
My thoughts on this pretty much same as like Natalie shared. My best friend male has become annoying to me and I quit to meet with him since last year.
Sometime what we expect to happen in our life, it’s not happens actually. This is the natural order.
Goid Lord.. I found this at the perfect time. I finally wised up.. Whew. Its hard for me. Its been weeks since I told him that this quasi friendship/relationship/madness was over.. I know its the right decision bc everything in me knows it is.. Its just kinda hard.. Bit do I feel oretty pathetic for allowing this.. Ugh
Sorry.. I DO know how to spell!!! I tried typing w/o my glasses. Duh????