Are Relationship Coaches the New Scammers? Inside the Unregulated Industry Selling Love Advice

You know the type. Scroll through your feed for five minutes and you’ll see one: a relationship coach. They have the perfect Instagram grid, the slickly edited reels, and a bio full of promises that feel like they were ripped from a movie script. “Get your ex back.” “Manifest your soulmate.” “Fix your broken marriage with my proven formula.”

Let’s be honest: it’s tempting—especially when you’re hurting from a recent breakup, feeling deeply lonely, or just trying to figure out what that “situationship” you’re in even is. But here’s the part that should give you pause, the part that really gets me: anyone, and I mean anyone, can call themselves a relationship coach. There’s no degree required, no license to earn, no one making sure they have a clue what they’re doing. And in that wide-open, unregulated space, the line between someone trying to help and someone trying to make a quick buck gets dangerously blurry.

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The whole coaching industry is a beast worth billions, and relationship coaching is one of its star players. The International Coaching Federation reported that the number of coaches in the U.S. shot up by over 50% in just a few years. And you can see why. It's a killer business model. All you need is a laptop, a ring light, and a confident smile, and suddenly you’re in business, selling everything from one-off “clarity” calls to thousand-dollar group programs and VIP one-on-one packages. The hook is irresistible: the idea that love—the most beautifully chaotic part of being human—can be neatly solved if you just pay someone who says they’ve cracked the code. But behind the curated posts and glowing testimonials, you start to hear different stories.

I’ve heard this story so many times it’s starting to sound like a script. Take the woman who poured nearly $3,000 into a coaching package that promised the world—weekly calls, personalized support, the whole nine yards. What she got was patchy communication, advice so generic you could find it on a self-help blog in two minutes, and a coach who kept trying to upsell her on even more expensive programs. It’s a pattern: people pay huge sums of money when they're at their most vulnerable and walk away not just with the same heartache, but with an empty bank account too.

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It’s not that the advice is always bad. Sometimes a coach can offer a genuinely helpful perspective or a useful communication tool. But when you’re being sold a fantasy like “guaranteed soulmate success,” it stops being coaching and starts feeling like manipulation. These coaches are smart; they know exactly who to target. They’re marketing to people in pain, people who are so desperate for answers that they’ll spend anything to make the hurt go away. And that’s when it looks less like a calling and a lot more like a hustle.

Now, to be fair, you can’t paint every coach with the same brush. Some are the real deal. They’ve studied psychology, they’re trained in communication methods, they build ethical businesses, and their clients genuinely see positive changes. But because there are no rules, how is the average person supposed to tell the difference between a qualified professional and someone who’s just good at marketing? Think about it: if a licensed therapist gives you harmful advice, you can report them. There are consequences. If a relationship coach does the same, you’re on your own—no refund, no accountability, just a very expensive lesson learned.

The problem is bigger than just a few bad actors. It’s the entire industry’s reliance on selling quick fixes for something that has none. Love isn’t like building a business or training for a marathon; you can’t just follow a three-step framework and expect a guaranteed result. Relationships are messy and complicated. They’re built on our emotions, our past traumas, and our family histories. Trying to boil all of that down to a simple formula isn’t just naive—it can be downright dangerous.

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This is where it gets really scary: people who genuinely need therapy for their mental health might end up with a coach instead, putting off the real help they need. Others might be convinced to stay in a toxic relationship because a coach promised them that “working on communication” would fix everything, even when the real issue is abuse. Social media just throws gasoline on the fire. Coaches don’t just sell their advice; they sell their lives. The dreamy vacations, the perfect-looking partner, and the smiling selfies are all presented as “proof” that their methods work.

The message isn’t even subtle, is it? If you want a life that looks like mine, pay me. But how much of that is real, and how much is just clever branding? And even if it is real, is it right to sell advice about love by dangling an aspirational lifestyle in front of people who are hurting? So, where does that leave us? I don’t believe every relationship coach is a scammer. But I do believe the industry is set up in a way that makes scamming incredibly easy. And when people are in pain, they aren’t always thinking clearly about whom to trust or how to spend their money. That’s what worries me. Selling hope is a powerful thing, but when it’s done irresponsibly, it’s just exploitation.

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Until things change, the responsibility falls back on us. We have to be the ones to ask the hard questions before we hand over our credit card details. What are your actual qualifications? Can you show me specific results, not just vague testimonials? What’s your refund policy? Do you know when to tell a client they need a therapist, not a coach? And maybe the biggest question of all: why should I trust you with the most vulnerable part of my life?

Listen, we all need guidance sometimes. But for now, the safest bet is a healthy dose of skepticism. Learn what you can, but don’t buy into promises that sound too good to be true. Because in love, just like in the rest of life, there are no shortcuts. Never have been. Never will be.

by Misthi Shrestha