We all want some love, and we crave expressing love to others. It’s human nature and a human need. However, sometimes our love life goes off the rails. Life or career gets in the way, or a nasty breakup clouds our perspective on love.

Do you, for example, have mixed feelings about Valentine’s and other holidays?

Regardless of your relationship status, experts agree on one thing: Some people grab control of their lives while others let circumstances influence and direct their lives.

Those who don’t exercise control feel powerless, frustrated, and exhausted. But that’s not you. You have already mastered control over your career and can take back control over your love life. Here’s how you do it.

Start by self-love

Repeat this after me: YOU CAN’T GIVE WHAT YOU DON’T HAVE.

If you don’t love yourself, how do you expect to love another human being with flaws just like you?

The first step to wrenching back control over your love life is to work on you. How do you treat yourself? Do you take time to heal, to reflect, or to relax and be in the moment? Do you spoil yourself from time to time with simple pleasures or elaborate activities such as a massage or dinner?

How you love yourself is how you eventually teach others to love and treat you. If you learn to treat yourself with kindness, others will reciprocate.

So take the time out for you. Reflect on what you want in life. Spend time alone with you. Start and build a loving relationship with yourself. Doing this will slowly prepare you for the next phase, determining how your life should be.

What do you want and why?

Most journeys have a destination. You don’t just wake up one day and decide, well, I’m going to climb Everest today. No, you prepare first.

The journey to find a soulmate works the same way. Before you start looking for love, establish, in your mind, how that looks like and how your love life should be.

Visualizing your perfect match helps you narrow down on your irreducible minimums, and determine the kind of person you want in life based on your current journey.

For example, do you want the relationship to end in marriage? What are your three, five, and ten-year plans, and how does your future partner fit into them? Besides the physical attributes, what kind of person are you looking for?

Bit by bit, you’ll arrive at the ideal person, which makes the next step a walk in the park.

Find a love interest.

Now comes the fun part. Finding a love interest. During this stage, you meet and mingle with different individuals that match your criteria.

Generally, you can meet people from just about anywhere. Introductions from friends, social media, dating sites, and apps, or you can try a matchmaking service.

HeHe Match, for example, offers a one-of-its-kind matchmaking service for professional singles who do not have the time to weed through all the potential mates.

Having established your criteria and irreducible minimums on a soulmate, HeHe Match uses that information, among other data points, and utilizes advanced matching making algorithms and input from the best matchmakers in the industry to connect you to only those people that meet your criteria.

It saves you both time and wasted effort.

Alternatively, you can slough it out in the online dating space or take chances on friends. Finding a potential partner is one thing, establishing rapport and a relationship; that’s for the next two steps.

Master the art of flirting

Great. You know how to love yourself, the type of person you want, and how to find them. How do you start a conversation and build a relationship?

Welcome to flirting 101.

Flirting, or the art of seduction, is both an art and science. Master flirters use a mixture of scientifically proven techniques, and gut-feelings to woo their partners.

What are they?

• Presentation – how you dress, talk, act, and behave. Ideally, you should dress to impress and make a killer first impression.
• Small talk – Relationships are based on communication and conversations. At some point on your date, you’ll have to speak. Keep the conversation exciting and steer clear of controversial topics such as politics, religion, etc.
• Eye contact – How would you feel if you went on a date and the other party looks at their mobile phones throughout the dinner? Eye contact is a game-changer. It draws you closer to people and reminds them that you’re paying attention.
• Smile – It’s that simple. Smiling is a sign of openness and warmth, and endears you to your date.

The bottom line here is this: Flirting is like a dance. A give and take of sorts. It’s also about the small details—a smile here, a striking dress, stimulating conversation, politeness, etc.

Commit to the process

You won’t find love on the first try. You may have to kiss the proverbial 99 frogs before you finally meet your match.

That’s okay.

The journey to taking back control over your love life started with you. As long as you learn to love yourself, you’ve done the most significant bit, and will find love eventually.

Love is fickle sometimes. You may go for long periods without someone, and then you meet that one person who makes your world spin and makes you wonder where they have been all your life.

Take it easy and commit to finding and nurturing the relationship that comes from this process.

Have fun in your new love life.