I Loved a Prince. He Became a Frog. I Had to Walk Away

What is your value if you mean nothing to me?

One of the hardest truths I’ve had to accept is this: when love dies, so does the value it once gave. And when value disappears, you must walk away.

Walking away from my relationship was difficult because I feared I was leaving behind the best thing I ever had.

Oh my, were we in love.

He was the sweetest, cutest, most generous human in the world to me. I thought the world of him. I used to imagine that when I became the next Chimamanda Adichie, the world would see that feminists could have beautiful, respectful relationships too.

I never imagined a world where this man wasn’t my bae. We were supposed to be the Romeo and Juliet of real life.

Oh my. I imagine the world had a good laugh at that.

The more I fought for our relationship, the more it broke me. I fought through humiliation, disrespect, an affair with a secretary we hired, and eventually being pushed out of the business we built together.

I fought for him and for hope — hope that the man I loved was still buried somewhere inside the frog who had taken his place.

I fought myself into madness. I fought myself into bitterness. I fought myself into brokenness.

Finally, I fought myself into exhaustion.

Exhaustion is what you get from fighting for someone who doesn’t want you. From fighting for someone who doesn’t want to be fought for. Exhaustion is what happens when your soul gives up.

Day by day, I had to make peace with the truth: the man I loved had been swallowed. The man I once admired — the man who used to call me every hour just to say I love you- was gone.

In his place stood a frog who, if I dared to call, would tell me how stupid and useless I was. Would tell me to stop monitoring him — because “he wasn’t in jail.”

My prince didn’t just disappear. He turned on me.

My love morphed into disgust, almost overnight. And I still get emotional whiplash trying to understand what the hell happened.

But it happened. And moving on was hell.

I kept asking myself: What if I leave, and then the frog spits out the man? What if some other woman gets the best version of him? What if he fights his way back from whatever swallowed him?

But closure, I’ve learned, is the ending I give myself.

I had him. For a while. But that man is gone. Whether he ever returns, whether someone else kisses the frog and turns him back into a prince — that’s not my story anymore.

Walking away from a love I thought was divine was the last thing I wanted to do. But I’m still walking.

So what finally woke me up from the dream that I was the princess who could rescue the prince?

Value.

I had to ask myself: What exactly do you see in this man now?

In Nigeria, there’s a saying:
“Monkey no fine…” (The monkey isn’t good-looking.)
And the response is:
“Im mama like am!” (but its mother loves it anyway.)

That’s value.

A person can be a nobody. But when you love them, they become everything.

A cleaner can feel like a king. A poor man can feel like a president. Love is the crown. Love is the elevation.

But when love dies, so does the crown.

If I stop loving you, I stop giving you value in my life. You become a stranger on the street.

How do you stay with someone who means nothing to you anymore? You don’t. You can’t. Respect dies. Contempt comes easy.

To walk away, I had to take off the rose-tinted glasses. I stopped seeing the prince. I started seeing the frog.

Monkey no fine…!

Im mama like am.

If you want unconditional love, even while treating someone like trash, only your mother might give you that.

Everyone else? Their love is tied to the value you bring to their lives.

For my own well-being, I had to start seeing the frog for what he really was. And in doing so, something tragically beautiful happened:

I saw the frog for what it was — a mere frog.
And I realized I was never a princess with magic lips. I was a human. A woman. A commoner.

I needed to stop searching for a prince to attach value to — someone to save me.

Now, I give value. And I start with me.

What could be more noble than giving the highest value you can to yourself?