Game, set … match? Can a dating coach help you win at love?

Modern dating is a hellscape. Just ask any single person, who will probably regale you with stories of endless swiping, ghosting, cringe Hinge dates and unfulfilling “situationships”. But what if there was a way to escape all this and put yourself on a fast track to finding The One?

That very aim is driving the rise of dating coaches – people who make money from helping their clients to find a partner. According to the New York Times, now is a better time than ever to be a relationship coach, with the widespread dissatisfaction with dating apps and a growing sense of “heteropessimism” fuelling their popularity. In 2023, Shirley Williams, a then 37‑year‑old from New York, went viral when she posted a video sharing that she spent $10,000 on a dating coach, and got engaged within a year. Her post sparked intense debate between people who thought it was a ridiculous expense, and others who wondered why this was so much more controversial than, say, investing in education, travel and work.

Dating coaches shouldn’t be confused with matchmakers, who aim to fast-track things by setting their clients up with people. Instead, most coaches follow a programme of self-care and confidence exercises, alongside elements of manifestation – the very unscientific practice of visualising your life goals. My instinctive reaction was to assume that they’re simply the latest way for my generation of millennials to outsource our problems. And after speaking to coaches and their clients, I’m still sceptical that they’re the key to finding love, but I’ve learned that there’s much more to it. In fact, if you want to form a better relationship with dating, or figure out where you’ve been going wrong, then a dating coach may be just what you need.

My introduction to dating coaches happened at a party, when I got talking to Izzy, who excitedly told me how hiring one had changed her life. At 30, Izzy had never been in a relationship. “At one point, I was the only one in a female friendship group of 15 who was single, so I found that really alienating,” she says. “It makes you feel like you’ve done something wrong – like there’s a missing piece in the puzzle.” It got so bad that Izzy had begun to internalise the belief that she was uniquely unworthy of love. But that started to change when her brother introduced her to dating coach Lucy Yarrow. A year after completing the 12-week Love With Lucy programme, Izzy is nine months into her first serious relationship – and she couldn’t be happier.

How did the coaching actually work? Yarrow’s programme was based around identifying Izzy’s “limiting beliefs” about herself – for example, that she was “going to be single for ever” – and challenging the ways they were holding her back from finding love. The first step was delving into her romantic past, all the way back to her first kiss, to find the origin of her insecurities. “Through that, so many things surfaced – some of the terrible, awful horror stories I hadn’t really shared or picked up on, even from being a teenager,” Izzy remembers. “Obviously, that shapes who we are now. So we did a full retrospective.”

Once they had identified the core issues, Izzy was given “empowering beliefs” to counter negative thoughts about herself. (Including slides featuring daily tasks, with written affirmations to read out loud.) Yarrow also set her homework, like asking herself a specific set of questions after a date, such as, “What side of me did they bring out?” and “Did I feel valued and attractive in their company?”

In fact, one of the biggest hurdles Izzy had to overcome was learning to focus on her own experience. She realised she was so preoccupied by wondering what men were thinking on dates that she forgot to even consider whether she was enjoying herself. “I’d always go to these negative spaces like, ‘What if he doesn’t want another date? What if he ghosts me?’” she explains. “I think that’s a pattern a lot of women probably fall into, because we’re conditioned to be that way. But Lucy would say: ‘Izzy, you also have autonomy and power here. What is it that you want?’”

It’s important to note that, while many dating coaches have some life coaching qualifications, they don’t have to undergo any official training. Unlike professionally regulated titles, such as psychiatrist, anybody can call themselves a coach (or a therapist, because many therapist titles aren’t protected either). Ian MacRae, a psychologist and member of the British Psychological Society’s research board, says dating coaches are essentially left to self-regulate and are not bound by the same rules as his peers, such as patient confidentiality. This is what allows so many life and dating coaches to double as content creators on Instagram and TikTok (or appear as “experts” on reality shows such as Married at First Sight).

Even so, MacRae says this doesn’t mean they’re all bad: “Most people who do it are probably well meaning, but a subsection of them are actually good at it, so it’s about doing the research to figure out who is both well-meaning and good at it.”

Many coaches have completed some form of training. Yarrow, who coached Izzy, studied at The Clique Academy (now known as She Leads) – an online programme that specialises in training women to be life coaches. She tells me that the vast majority of her clients are heterosexual women in their 30s, and that the most crucial part of the process is zoning in on what they actually want. “A lot of people want a partner, but it’s about really homing in on what those top priorities are. I want to be in a relationship and feel ‘X, Y, Z’ with someone who is ‘X, Y, Z’.”

How much does all of this cost? As with therapists, the prices of dating coaches can vary immensely. Some have huge social followings and charge thousands for their guidance. Yarrow costs about £85 a session, depending on the length, with clients usually requiring between eight and 12 weekly meetings to cover her programme.

The rise of dating coaches, plus the fact that they seem to be largely a heterosexual phenomenon, points to a growing dissonance in straight dating culture. In her 2025 book, Love in Exile, the writer Shon Faye describes this as a “crisis of expectation”. In previous generations, the primary goal was for men to be a provider, but today women want someone who can be a best friend, a therapist, a soulmate, with whom they share emotional intelligence and a physical connection – a list that most straight men aren’t yet being socialised to fulfil.

Laurence Houde, who is based in New York City, has been working as a men’s dating coach for two and a half years. She realised that, although we’re used to hearing about the so-called “dating crisis” from women, men are equally unhappy with the romantic experiences they’re having. She usually starts with a 90-minute session, priced at $397. This features a “love life audit” of previous partners, and includes a week of follow-up support, including messages and voice notes.

Houde splits her clients into two categories. The first are men who are “a little bit more emotionally prepared to invest in a relationship” and have already done some of the “groundwork” on their own, often with the help of a therapist. The second category don’t quite understand what’s not working yet and wonder what they’re doing wrong. These men, she says, can be prime targets for manosphere influencers, who cynically use their insecurities as a gateway to extreme, misogynistic content online. Instead, she takes the opposite approach. “Usually, I find that expressing their emotions doesn’t come as easily for them,” she says. “Often, it’s a fear of being seen, so we look at that fear and dig into why it’s there, and then I give them exercises to overcome it.”

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the rise of dating coaches is how they normalise the idea of changing yourself to find love. When millennials like me were growing up, romcoms promoted the fantasy of being loved for being totally yourself, flaws and all. (At the end of Bridget Jones’s Diary, Mark Darcy tells the clumsy, expletive-loving, cigarette-puffing heroine: “I like you very much just as you are.”) This summer, The Project – the debut novel by British Vogue dating columnist Annie Lord – suggested that the dating zeitgeist has shifted. In the book, Daisy and her best friend, Maya, essentially act as coaches (in all but name) to James – a friend from university who they think has so much potential if he could learn to open up about his emotions and dress a little better. When romantic feelings start to develop between James and Daisy, she realises it’s not just James who needs to change, because she’s got a lot of deep-rooted patterns that are holding her back, too.

Lord tells me that when she was writing the book she started therapy and began to unpack some of the reasons why she has been single for so long. (These included being attracted to men who weren’t interested in her, and suspicious of those who were.) “I poured a lot of that into Daisy’s character, which is why she probably goes through a bigger change than James by the end,” she says. “And change can be good. Right now, we’re treating people so disposably that we don’t allow the space for them to change. We’re not patient enough.”

If you’re thinking about hiring a dating coach, it’s advisable to be sceptical of anyone demanding thousands for their services – particularly those who make unrealistic promises about finding Happily Ever After, or suggest you can “manifest” your way to love by carrying crystals, lighting candles and chanting. “My advice,” MacRae says, “whether you’re seeing a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a therapist or a dating coach, is taking everything with a grain of salt.”

But if you can find the right coach, with a reasonably priced programme that works for you? Then there is potential for personal growth – and, yes, love. “My goal was to find a partner, but it wasn’t really about that,” Izzy says. “I needed to feel happy, confident and good at being single and exploring romance. I needed to do the work to be in a better place myself.”