What Are People Actually Paying For?

An essay on certainty, emotional steadiness, and what people are actually buying when they reach out to a coach.

I am embarrassingly susceptible to infomercials.

Late at night, if someone convincingly demonstrates a back scratcher with an ergonomic handle, I’m halfway to entering my credit card details. They don’t sell the object. They sell relief.

You don’t buy the handle. You buy the fantasy that the irritation will stop.

I have been wondering what I am actually selling.

As a relationship coach, I cannot guarantee anything. I cannot guarantee that someone’s partner will agree to open the relationship. I cannot guarantee jealousy will disappear. I cannot guarantee reconciliation. I cannot guarantee sex, clarity, alignment, or a happy ending.

I once had a client ask me, very directly, if I could guarantee he would “get laid.”

He leaned back in his chair and waited, the way men wait after they have shown their hand.

For a moment, I understood the temptation. Not to lie exactly. Just to soften the edges. To imply momentum. To suggest that with the right strategy, the right words, something would shift.

It would have been easier.

Instead, I said no.

He looked disappointed, almost irritated, as if I were withholding a feature.

He still came back.

That question has stayed with me.

Not because of what he wanted, but because of what I felt in that moment. A flicker of doubt. The uncomfortable awareness that certainty is easier to sell than presence. And the quiet relief that I did not trade honesty for approval.

They say they want answers. They say they want clarity. They say they want to fix the relationship.

None of that is what shows up in the room.

What shows up is someone who feels like they are standing in the middle of a storm. Someone who is scared they are about to blow up their life. Someone oscillating between urgency and paralysis. Someone ashamed that they do not have this figured out yet.

They do not really want a four-session package. They want the feeling on the other side of panic.

They want to feel steady.

My business coach told me to frame my work in terms of the dream outcome. Confidence. Security. Emotional grounding. Almost too neat.

I resisted. I grew up in a culture where endurance was a virtue and silence was safer than spectacle. You did not package your inner life into promises.

Nobody wants a checklist.

They want not to feel alone while they consider something that scares them.

They want someone who does not flinch when they say “the thing”. Someone who will not rush them toward a decision. Someone who can help them separate panic from truth.

There is no infomercial for that. Some days I still wish there were.

It would be simpler to say: “four sessions and you will have clarity”. “Six sessions and you will feel secure”. “Eight sessions and the doubt will lift”.

But love does not respond to guarantees.

And I am not willing to sell certainty I cannot provide.

What I can offer is presence.

Not answers. Not a future outcome. Presence.

After today’s session, I close the laptop. The flat is quiet in a particular way it is only quiet on Tuesdays. Maya is with her father, and the late light has turned the window the color of weak tea.

Today’s client was a woman. She had not asked anything as direct as he had. Her questions came sideways, the way they often do.

I do not make notes yet. For a few minutes I do nothing. I keep her face in mind. The pause before she asked her real question. The way her shoulders fell when I said the thing she had not let herself say.

By the time Taco jumps into my lap demanding dinner, I am back inside my own life. Not because I have done the work of leaving hers. Because I have given her weight the time it asked for.

That is harder to measure. Harder to market. Harder to explain at dinner parties.

But it is real.

Maybe what people are actually paying for is not transformation.

Maybe they are paying for the experience of not being alone while they navigate something that feels bigger than them.

They are paying for steadiness. For someone who refuses to sell them certainty.

That choice costs something.

It costs the comfort of clean promises. It costs the illusion of control.

But it also means I get to stay honest.

And maybe that is the only guarantee I want to keep.

Victoria Onken is a relationship coach for ethical non-monogamy and open relationships, based in Amsterdam and working online with clients across the US, UK, and Europe.