“You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince” is a saying I well remember from my childhood. It is an allusion to an old fairy tale, “The Frog Prince,” in which a princess kisses a frog and transforms him into a prince. The comment was oft repeated as consolation after a bad date or breakup. The trite cliché provided scant solace at the time, but the underlying truth became more apparent in later years.
Luckily, all four of my children have found their prince/princess. We feel fortunate that our “in-laws” agreed to join our burgeoning brood. Our kids managed to land real keepers. We feel equally fortunate that they threw some of the others back into the dating pond. It’s not that they weren’t a good catch, it’s just that they weren’t a good match. Likewise, I look back at some of the guys I dated before I met my husband. They were great guys, just not great for me. It was the pairing that was the problem. We weren’t a good fit, and the relationship would have chafed over time.
There are maxims such as “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” or “different strokes for different folks” that apply to the dating scene as much as the frog kissing adage. There is no one-size-fits-all gold standard. We’re all different, thank goodness, and “there’s a lid for every pot.”
