23 Feb The Price Is Right

This blog post was written by RHN’s Jesse Hugh Hauck, MA, LMFT

I look into the eyes of my partner, and I see something incredible. I see my past, present, and future colliding. I see a living history of my emotional development. It gives me comfort. In that moment of realization, I can see every struggle, every mistake, every success, and every prior relationship in my life prepared me for him. The ups and downs, the highs and lows, each were guiding me to him.

Have you ever watched the game show The Price Is Right? Do you know that game called Plinko where a contestant stands a top an upright board and drops a chip down for it to seemingly randomly fall into an unknown destination after being knocked back and forth by strategically-placed obstacles along the fall? Well, yeah, that’s how I felt most of my adult life navigating relationship after relationship.

I was that Plinko chip bouncing from one unsuitable partner to another. Falling faster and harder each time I experienced what I viewed as a failure in creating a healthy relationship. I didn’t realize the faster and harder I got knocked around the more momentum I was building for some unknown abrupt stop to occur. Every time I thought I found my way, the destination managed to elude me. Finally, when I stopped and hit the bottom of the board, something remarkable happened. I hit the jackpot! No, it wasn’t the cash prize seen on the game show. Instead, it was something all the more rewarding. I found the partner I had hoped to have met so many times before. However, this time I was no longer falling. This time I was at rest just like the Plinko chip sitting in the cash reward slot at the end of the game.

Upon reflecting, I realized there were forces at play guiding my journey to him. What I viewed as obstacles along the way were simply guides. Just as the chip relies on outside forces such as gravity during the fall down the board, you can’t always see them or understand them, but the forces are there. Every ex, every broken heart, every shattered dream, every lesson learned along the way, brought me to where I always wanted to be in a relationship. At that moment, upon that single epiphany, I suddenly felt free of all the anger, hurt, resentments, and pain I carried from all the others before him because each in their own way unknowingly guided me to him.

So, that’s how I found the love that I want. That is how I found the love I deserve. Quite simply I found myself. His love, the love from another, quickly followed. Just like the therapeutic process won’t always feel good or look pretty from the outside, you just need to trust the process and trust the outside forces and view the obstacles as guides to your unknown destination that once you reach, you will see, any price you paid along the way turned out to be right.