After a series of “dating horror stories,” one 28-year-old woman living in the Midwest says she turned to an online relationship coach in her mid-20s out of frustration with her love life.
“I was a little skeptical at first because I was like, ‘Oh, you don’t know who you’re going to be matched up with,” Sarah told NBC News, using a pseudonym to protect her privacy while sharing details about a personal topic.
The service, called Relationship Hero, paired her with Kyle Scheinkman, a 3-year veteran of the company known to customers as “Coach Kyle.” So when she decided to break up with a boyfriend in late 2023, Sarah turned once again to her coach.
“Reliance on friends was a big part of it, but at the end of the day, it’s nice to have a non-judgmental sounding board to hear you out, because your friends are always going to have your back no matter what,” Sarah said. “I needed to hear the truth.”
And she’s not alone.
Relationship Hero founder Liron Shapira says the app went from 100 clients when it launched as a startup in 2017 to more than 100,000 users today. And it’s one of dozens of services — including breakup dieticians, smartphone apps and even AI-assisted breakup coaches — that have proliferated in the past ten years, with the “breakupcoach” hashtags on TikTok and Instagram garnering 100,000 posts and millions of views between the two platforms.
While there’s no hard data on the number of Americans who are going through breakups, national statistics show there are more than 670,000 divorces each year, fueling a demand for family law and divorce services valued at an estimated $13.2 billion.
Meanwhile, the number of unmarried couples living together has more than doubled from 1990 to 2019, and the number of people waiting until their 40s and 50s for their first marriage has quadrupled over the same time period — all potential fuel for separations that are just as emotionally draining as divorces without all the paperwork.
Amy Chan is the founder and “Chief Heart Hacker” for Renew Breakup Bootcamp, a series of retreats dating back to 2017 that pack four days and three nights of therapy, counseling, breathwork and expert advice into a kind of supercharged health club for the heart.
“When I started in 2017 there was nothing like this. And when I talked about having a breakup bootcamp, people were like, ‘Why? Like, can’t they just get over it?’ And I think people have caught on that a breakup is something serious, and it requires help, and it requires nurturing. So, yes, it has become an industry,” Chan said.
Her bootcamps, which range in price from $2,000 to $4,000, feature her own guidance as a self-help author and relationship coach, along with a regular cast of outside experts, including psychologists, a therapeutic movement specialist, an executive coach and even a dominatrix, who offers advice on “unlocking the application of power dynamics” in relationships — all offered over an intense 12-hour day.
While Chan acknowledges that time alone can eventually reduce the emotional intensity of a breakup, she describes her bootcamp as less of a heartbreak speed run and more of a chance for attendees to focus on changes they can make in their own lives.
But there are two house rules: No trauma-bonding (meaning don’t date your fellow bootcampers) and no vilifying of ex-partners.
“We take a lot of scientific and research-backed methods to teach people the tools so that they can uncover their patterns, because it’s never just about the ex. There is recycled pain,” Chan said. “We can help people heal and process the pain from the heartbreak. But are they going to be able to interrupt their patterns so that they can create healthier relationships in the future?”
Paul Eastwick, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis and a co-host of The Love Factually Podcast, says he can see potential value in some of these services, but he cautions against relying on any one service on its own.
“A lot of what helps people get over a breakup is meaning-making and coming up with a narrative and a story for how the breakup happened,” Eastwick said. “I’d be suspicious if anybody was claiming like a dramatic shortcut to be able to do that, because it really does kind of take time to figure out which parts of your identity as a member of that prior couple are the things you want to retain, and what are the things that you want to let go.”
His advice for anyone recovering from a breakup is threefold: Get support from other people who care about you, build a coherent explanation about why the breakup happened and — eventually — move on to form a new, healthy relationship.
For Chelsea Burka, who ended a serious relationship in 2019, that’s exactly what happened. Five years after attending Renew Breakup Bootcamp, she says she’s in a healthy, happy relationship with a new boyfriend. She believes the lessons she learned at the bootcamp — along with changes she made over time — are the reason.
“I think the power of these spaces is, rather than feeling victim to circumstances happening to you, having the accountability and ownership to kind of turn the mirror back onto yourself and say, ‘How am I contributing to what’s not working in my life?’ And bringing awareness to that, so that you can rewire and shift them, and that takes time,” Burka said.
Her advice to others going through heartbreak, no matter what type of solace they’re seeking: “Things do get better, especially when you have the ability to put in the work.”
