#478 - Why Smart, Successful People Still Hire a Dating Coach
You wouldn't train for a marathon without a coach checking your form. You wouldn't build a business plan without running it past someone who's done it before. So why do we assume dating, one of the highest stakes arenas of adult life, is something we're just supposed to figure out on our own?
If you're divorced or widowed and back in the dating world after twenty, thirty, even forty years, you already know the truth. Nobody taught you how to do this. You learned the rules decades ago, in a completely different world, and now you're supposed to just know. Know how to read the signs. Know when to trust chemistry and when to question it. Know how to spot a pattern you've already repeated three times before you're six months deep into it again.
Why I'm So Passionate About This Work
I've lived a lot of what I talk about.
About fifteen years ago, I sat down and honestly looked at my own decisions, including the ones that led to my divorce. Early on, I'd made choices based on chemistry instead of compatibility, and never once stopped to ask whether what I felt lined up with what I needed. I learned that the hard way. And I believe God gave me some wisdom in the process that you just can't get out of a book.
Around that same time, complete strangers started opening up to me about their relationship problems, sometimes within minutes of meeting me. Eventually I realized what I'd learned from my own mistakes applied to almost everyone I talked to who was stuck in a bad relationship. That's what pushed me to write Dating Backward. I wanted to hand people what I had to learn on my own, the hard way, after the damage was already done. Nobody ever taught me how to do my due diligence before I fell in love, and even today, counseling, therapy, and pastoral care still don't. They're built to fix relationships that are already broken, not to teach the fundamentals before you're already attached.
I'm still single today, and that's not a failure to find someone, it's because I follow my own advice. I'd rather stay single than settle for chemistry over compatibility again. That doesn't mean I've given up. I'm still looking, still open to extraordinary love, I'm just not willing to lower the bar to get there. That's the transformation this work made in me, and that peace and clarity is what I want for you too.
Accountability Changes Everything
Left on our own, most of us are experts at rationalizing. We talk ourselves into "just one more chance." We convince ourselves the red flag was probably nothing, and let weeks slide into months without ever honestly asking, is this actually working?
A coach doesn't let you off the hook that easily. When you know you have to show up and report on what you actually did, not what you meant to do, it changes your behavior before the conversation even happens. Accountability isn't about being watched. It's about finally having a standard you're willing to hold yourself to.
An Outside Perspective Sees What You Can't
When you're in it, you're too close to see it clearly. That's not a character flaw, it's just how attachment works. The same qualities that make you a warm, all-in partner are the ones that can blind you to problems building right in front of you.
I couldn't see my own pattern until I was on the other side of it. A good coach doesn't have that disadvantage. They're not in the relationship, and they don't have your hope riding on the outcome. They can spot in week three what you might not see until year three, and say the hard thing out loud before it turns into the expensive thing. That's usually the real turning point for the people I work with: not meeting someone new, but finally seeing themselves clearly.
Fundamentals Still Matter
Nobody expects to pick up a golf club and shoot par. Yet somehow we expect ourselves to walk back into dating and instinctively know how to build a healthy relationship from scratch. Sound dating practices are learnable skills: knowing what you actually need versus what just feels exciting, knowing how to evaluate compatibility with your eyes open, knowing the difference between chemistry and character.
Nobody taught me this up front. Once these fundamentals become instinct instead of theory, you stop dating from anxiety and start dating from clarity.
What It Costs You
None of this is free, and I mean that in more ways than one.
There's a financial cost. Good coaching is an investment. If you wouldn't blink at paying a financial advisor to protect your retirement, why does your next relationship, arguably a bigger decision, get less consideration?
There's an accountability cost. Once you're working with a coach, "I didn't feel like it" stops being an acceptable answer. No more excuses, no more quietly letting things slide.
And there's an emotional cost. This is the big one. A coach is going to ask you to step back from the infatuation, the chemistry, the butterflies, and actually evaluate the person in front of you. That can feel like betraying your own feelings. I know, because I had to learn to do it with my own life first. Feelings make wonderful passengers and terrible drivers, and learning to tell the two apart is often the exact skill that's been missing.
Coaching Isn't for Everyone, and That's the Point
If you're not ready to be accountable, not willing to look past the spark and seriously evaluate someone, or you just want validation instead of the truth, coaching probably isn't for you right now. And that's okay.
But if you're tired of repeating the same pattern, tired of getting six months in before you see what was there all along, and you're ready to do the work instead of hoping the next one is different, this is exactly who it's for. It's who I wrote Dating Backward for. It's who I coach every day.
The cost isn't just what you pay a coach. It's also what it costs you to keep doing this alone.
Find a great coach.