Ladies, Please Stop Kissing Frogs

No frogs were hurt in the making of this article

Ladies, you’ve been misled by the media, by multiple generations of fairy tales, and many many cheesy romance novels. You don’t have to kiss many frogs to find your prince. In fact, avoid the frogs and toads altogether if you can. There is one fundamental piece that most ‘girl meets prince’ stories are missing. Princes (the metaphorical ones), raised in luxury and rose-beds, are often entitled snobs. What you want is not a prince, but a common man who’s putting in the work to become a king.

In other words, look not for a man who will make you the queen when he inherits daddy’s throne (or real estate business, or whatever). But instead, look for the man who will carve out a kingdom so he can be king (for his own sake, foremost) and will make you queen of his kingdom. And spoiler: such men won’t give you the time of their day if you’ve already kissed many, many frogs.

It is not your job to turn frogs into princes

There is an ocean of wonderful human beings out there. You don’t need to spend your time and painful effort trying to change a ‘cursed’ man back into a prince. Sure, all men (and women) have baggage. I’m not saying you should discard someone with a hard past or problems. What I’m saying is that the true kings and queens are the ones already taking steps to sort out their own baggage.

Don’t do everything for a frog frolicking in the dirty pond.

If someone stays as a frog until you kiss them, let them stay as a frog, I say. A real partnership is about helping each other solve problems, equally. It is not about you solving your partner’s problems while they do nothing. That means that if your partner is fully relying on you to solve their problems, something is fundamentally wrong in the way the scales are tilted. Yes, it is fair to ask (request) your partner to help, but it should be you who’s doing the lion’s share of work in solving your problems. Don’t do everything for a frog frolicking in the dirty pond.

The counter-argument to ‘destined’ love

If you’re a teenager who believes in a match made by destiny, I apologize to you. Please stop reading my article. You should hold on to your magical view of the world, as long as this world will allow you to do so.

But if you’ve grown up and realized what real relationships are all about, you know what I’m talking about. And you already know the answer to those who say ‘Oh, but it is love!’.

Here is a simple question: If you’re a girl who can turn a frog into a prince with your kiss (your love), what can you do with a man who’s not a frog?

What if the prince turns out to be a pig?

Just imagine that. If you give your time, attention and love to a man who does not spend his days jumping around in dirt, but is already building something of his life, just what could you build together? That is the kind of relationship that deserves you. Not frogs. After all, in the story of the frog who turns back to a prince, the likely scenario is that the prince will say ‘thank you, bye’ to the girl and go marry another princess to get the dowry. The frog who waits to be lifted out of his curse is waiting around for free rides and handouts, after all.

Kissing frogs makes you a frog-kisser

What happens if you kiss a frog, but he doesn’t turn into a prince? Well, you kiss another frog, right? That’s the game, or so they say. You gotta kiss many frogs till you find your prince, no?

Well, no.

Say you kiss a number of frogs and finally one turns into a prince. What if the prince turns out to be a pig? Or worse, what if he finds another princess? By this time you’re the girl who’s kissed a number or frogs. And sorry to put it bluntly, but the self-made princes have got better prospects, ones who aren’t so muddied yet.

This is the time of women entrepreneurs, leaders and revolutionaries.

And this is why you should get out of the spiral early on. Don’t spend your time, energy and best years on frogs. Please stop kissing frogs. Leave them to sort out their own curses. You have better things to do.

Why not flip the script?

Fake feminists would throw a tantrum on reading this. Fake feminists are the ones who speak loud and long about women’s empowerment and the like, but still wants a prince to make them a queen. But the real tigresses out there are proving that the age for such clichés are over. This is the time of women entrepreneurs, leaders and revolutionaries. Ladies, you don’t need princes anymore. This is a time when the determined ladies are setting examples by building their own kingdoms and ruling as queens in their own right.

And those exemplary paragons know better than to kiss frogs, no kidding.

Final words

This is a wake up call to all the wonderful women and men out there to stop kissing frogs. Frogs who would stay as frogs without your kiss don’t deserve you. Give yourself to a partner who would treat you as an equal and give you equal respect and love. Someone who would put in equal work into your relationship, and into building your lives.

Don’t waste it on someone who would stay in the mud if not for you. If you are stepping into the dirt, let it be to plant some seeds, not to kiss frogs.