Your Divorce Coach's Divorce Is None of Your Business

I have been divorced twice. That's the last time you will ever see me commence a post, article, or book with that statement.

Now, I realise that opening might feel a little jarring, perhaps even a touch hypocritical given I've just told you something I claim I'll never use as a hook again. But there's a point to it, and I'll get there shortly.

There is a growing trend in the divorce coaching world, and it's one I want to address directly. Many coaches, well-meaning and genuinely caring people, lead with their personal story of heartbreak and legal chaos as though it were a professional credential. The narrative goes something like this: "I've been through the worst of it, so I understand your pain, and that's why you should trust me to guide you." It's compelling. It's relatable. And in my view, it's a flawed foundation on which to build a professional relationship.

Let me offer a few analogies, because sometimes the absurdity of something only becomes clear when you hold it up to the light.

Would you engage a financial adviser whose primary selling point was that they had recently emerged from a particularly messy bankruptcy hearing? Probably not. You'd want someone who understood the mechanics of financial recovery, yes, but whose own finances weren't the qualifying experience. What about a criminal lawyer who opens the consultation with "After serving my prison sentence, I know exactly how to get you off"? Or a project manager pitching for a major construction contract who casually mentions that the last couple of buildings they oversaw had a tendency to, well, fall down, but assures you this time will be different?

We'd find these scenarios absurd, and rightly so. Yet in the coaching world, particularly in the emotionally charged space of divorce and separation, the "I've lived it" credential is often treated as the most important one on the list.

I'm not suggesting that personal experience is worthless. Far from it. Having navigated the emotional turbulence, the legal paperwork, and the identity crisis that so often accompanies the end of a marriage can absolutely inform a coach's empathy and understanding. There is real value in knowing, at a gut level, what it feels like to sit across from a mediator or to explain to your children/parents why there are now two bedrooms instead of one.

But here is the risk, and it's a significant one. A coach who leads with "I went through a bad one" will almost inevitably, even without realising it, view your situation through the lens of their own experience. Their wounds, their regrets, their particular brand of healing will colour the advice they give and the questions they ask. If their ex-partner was financially controlling, they may be hypervigilant about financial red flags in your story, even if that's not your central issue. If their divorce was acrimonious and dragged through the courts, they may be unconsciously biased toward adversarial thinking when a more collaborative approach might serve you far better.

Your divorce is not their divorce. Your marriage was not their marriage. And your path forward is entirely your own.

What you actually need from a coach is not a mirror of their past, but a clear and steady presence that helps you navigate your present. You need someone with genuine professional training, a framework for supporting people through transition, the emotional intelligence to separate their story from yours, and the skill to ask the right questions rather than assume the right answers.

Personal experience, when kept in its proper place, can be a useful thread in the fabric of a good coach's background. But it should never be the headline act. The moment a coach's story becomes more central to the relationship than yours, something has gone quietly wrong.

So the next time you're searching for someone to help you through one of the most difficult chapters of your life, by all means ask about their experience. Ask about their training, their approach, their professional development, and how they handle situations that might differ significantly from their own. And if the first thing they lead with is how terrible their own divorce was, perhaps that's worth pausing on.

You deserve a coach who is firmly and professionally focused on you. Not one who is still, somewhere beneath the surface, working through themselves.