About Debbie Rivera
A Business Mind.
A Minister’s Heart.
A Life That Understands.
I’m Debbie — marriage coach, affair recovery specialist, and a woman whose whole life has been preparation for sitting with couples in their hardest moments. Not just the training, though there is more of that than I can list. The life.
Everything I teach, I have lived first.
My Story
How Life Made Me This Coach
Long before I ever coached a couple, I lived a masterclass in doing hard things: I earned my Bachelor of Science in Accounting — with a concentration in Tax — while raising four young children and helping run a family business. I learned then what I teach now: that ordinary people can do extraordinarily hard things when they have a plan and refuse to walk alone.
I have always lived a life of service — including four years of Lay Pastoral Ministry formation and more than fourteen years leading a bereavement community, sitting with hearts in their darkest seasons. Along the way I discovered the two callings that would become my life’s work: helping the grieving find their light, and helping couples find their way back to each other.
And I have known both sides of love’s ledger myself. I knew a long, deeply romantic marriage — I understand from the inside what real partnership asks of us, what it gives, and why it is worth fighting for. And I have known profound loss. That is why I hold a truth most marriage coaches never learn: a marriage in crisis is grieving, and grief must be honored before trust can be rebuilt.
I don’t teach from a textbook. I teach from a life that has loved deeply, lost greatly, and found the way through — and I will walk that way with you.
What Makes My Work Different
Why Couples Choose Me
I understand affairs as few coaches do
An affair is a wound — a grief. As one of the few marriage coaches who is also a Certified Grief Coach, I guide you through the grieving, then the healing, then the rebuilding of trust — on an honesty deeper than your marriage ever had before.
Men trust me
I have a particular gift for helping husbands step back into their confidence — the men who feel criticized, shut out, and unsure how to win at home anymore. There is no villain’s chair in my sessions. Ever.
Women reclaim more than the marriage
Through my year-long Feminine Power immersion with Dr. Claire Zammit, I help wives whose sense of self has been shaken — by betrayal or by years of carrying everything — reclaim their voice, their boundaries, and themselves.
Whole-person, not one-method
I’ve studied the marriage from every angle it can break — the research, the brain, the body, the inner parts, and the soul — because couples don’t heal in pieces. Your path is built from all of it, around your unique story.
Education & Training
The Foundation Beneath the Heart
I’ve devoted decades — and more than two dozen certifications — to one question: how does love survive its hardest moments?
Couples & Relationship
- Certified Couples Relationship Coach — Relationship Coaching Institute
- Gottman Method trained & certified · Registered Gottman Relationship Checkup provider
- EFT certified · Imago Relationships certified
- Encounter-centered Couples training — Hedy Schleifer
- Relational Life Therapy coursework toward certification — Terry Real
- Advanced studies with Esther Perel — the leading voice on infidelity
The Whole Person
- Inner Harmony Practitioner License — parts work in the tradition of Richard Schwartz
- Certified Grief Coach · Somatic training · HeartMath training
- Studies with Dr. Dan Siegel — interpersonal neurobiology
- Feminine Power year-long immersion — Dr. Claire Zammit
- Master Life Coach, plus ten additional life coaching certifications
Education & Service
- B.S. in Accounting, concentration in Tax
- Four-year Lay Pastoral Ministry certification
- 14+ years of bereavement community leadership
What I Believe
Where Love Can Have Hope Again
I believe couples come back from this — I have watched marriages that looked finished become more honest, more tender, and more alive than before the crisis. I believe there is no shame in struggling: infidelity and disconnection touch far more marriages than anyone admits, and reaching for help is strength, not failure. And I believe in creating the marriage that serves you now — not the one from your wedding day, because you were different people then — so that you both feel seen, heard, satisfied, content, understood, and loved.
That is my whole heart’s work. It would be my honor to make it yours.
Let’s Talk
Now you know who I am. I’d love to hear who you are — and where your marriage needs a guide.