Coach’s Insight: When Healing and Chemistry Collide By Coach Elle Jolie | NSCA-CPT | Elle Jolie Wellness
There are moments in coaching when the work reaches far beyond programming, nutrition, or stress management. Sometimes, we stand at the edge of something resembling more like human attraction, resonance, curiosity and it challenges the clarity of our role.
A few months ago, I met someone who would later become a client. Before that, we’d shared a kiss one of those rare, unexpected moments that feel charged with possibility. But as soon as I learned he was in a relationship model that didn’t align with my values, I knew immediately: this isn’t my lane.
No judgment. Just self-knowledge. I am not built to be a side story.
When he later requested to work with me as a client, I hesitated. But I also knew I could hold this ethically with full transparency, grounded professionalism, and the same compassion I bring to all my work. And that’s exactly what I did.
He told me early on that he wanted to work with me because he was drawn to a certain freedom I seemed to hold — something he couldn’t quite name but deeply admired. And as we began to explore what that freedom meant and looked like, it became clear that freedom always has a cost.
He had built a life that offered security, financial, relational, structural. What he saw as confinement had also kept him safe. My life, in contrast, is wide open. I live with self-determination, autonomy, and emotional wellness, free from coercion or intimate partner control. But that freedom has come with its own price: uncertainty, financial instability, and sometimes, the ache of doing it all alone.
Exploring that truth together was unexpectedly interesting.
What he admired in my freedom was not something to acquire, it was something to understand. Freedom isn’t the absence of boundaries; it’s the willingness to bear the cost of living by your values.
So it began, I’ve watched him adapt learning about nutrition, stress tools, and behavioural consistency. The progress has been real. Initiating a progressive overload program built just for his elite athleticism was elating for me. But beneath the surface, there is some confusion for him. That absence is his to understand, not mine to rescue.
And yet, within that space of restraint, there were moments of pure brilliance. Conversations that felt electric. Insights that cut through the noise of daily life. A recited poem that will forever live in my mind words offered in passing but landing with the weight of something sacred.
He’s complicated. Guarded. But when comfortable, disarmingly funny and sharp in a way that made the world feel more alive for a moment. There’s a ruggedness to him, a kind of “G.I. Joe” composure wrapped around surprising brilliance. It was, in its own way, a gift to see that side of someone.
If I had said no to the experience entirely, I would have missed out on a purpose-filled connection, one that reminded me that attraction and meaning can coexist with boundaries. That we can honour chemistry without letting it consume us.
As coaches, we’re not immune to these moments. We’re human first. But the work asks something bigger of us to see without taking, to care without crossing, and to recognize when the most ethical act of love is release.
Boundaries aren’t walls. They’re the structure that allows both people to grow.
And when you can walk away with your integrity intact heart open, head high you’ve modeled healing in its purest form.
That’s the quiet, unseen side of coaching no one writes about.
But maybe we should.
Love, Coach Elle