Does it feel like everyone around you is pairing off while you’re still walking into parties solo?
Maybe you’ve been trying to line up a solid date forever, only to watch each new spark fizzle.
Or you’ve spent late nights with friends dissecting how to get a boyfriend (finally), but nothing seems to stick.
I’ve spent years coaching women through this exact stage— smart, accomplished women who wonder if they should just give up on dating altogether.
The truth?
Finding love isn’t about chasing harder. It’s about approaching dating and relationships differently.
If you’re ready to meet someone great, these tips will help you build a life where asking yourself how to get a boyfriend will be a distant memory.
1. Self-love (or at least like) comes first
The idea that you have to love yourself first or no one else will love you is a really, really sticky, stubborn idea in our culture.
It’s so stubborn that people actually get stuck on the “need self love first” step because they know they don’t love themselves and think that self love will fix everything. It won’t actually.
In over a decade as a dating and relationship coach, I’ve seen plenty of examples of people who didn’t even like themselves who were dearly loved by others.
Self love isn’t essential to BE loved by someone else.
Someone can live across the world from you and love you to the moon and back with zero effect on you.
The experience of love comes from within the individual doing the loving.
The problem with not loving (or at least liking yourself) when you’re out there looking for love is that if you don’t at least like yourself first, other people might love you but it will be hard to absorb.
Usually, people accept and dish out pretty awful treatment to others when they don’t love themselves.
You can be loved from outside, but doing the act of loving someone else in an actual relationship without a bunch of drama may be a challenge.
And, we live in an age where low self-esteem and confidence is at epidemic levels.
Signaling to men that you are amazing and eventually getting a boyfriend is so much easier when you believe it yourself.
2. Don’t expect perfection
You aren’t perfect and it should be obvious that you can’t expect any guy to be perfect either.
Love is about loving someone with their flaws, not until their weaknesses show.
When you’re willing to own your flaws and risk getting hurt, you suddenly become magnetic to men who aren’t chasing perfection— they’re looking for a woman who can relax, laugh, and enjoy life with them.
3. Know what you want
While you shouldn’t be going around searching for perfection in the male population, you aren’t going to meet the guy of your dreams if you don’t know what he “looks like” in terms of qualities and standards.
Set a list of “non-negotiables” for your ideal boyfriend.
Then when you are dating, you will be able to weed out incompatible men faster.
Too many women today just settle on the first guy that will keep dating them, and they wind up abandoned, heartbroken and even abused as a result.
4. Stick to your standards
Healthy, grounded men are drawn to women with clear, reasonable standards— as long as they feel respected and not compared to some impossible ideal.
A woman who knows her worth and refuses to settle is magnetic. The right man doesn’t see her standards as a threat; he sees them as an invitation to rise.
So when you meet a man who genuinely meets your non-negotiables, trust yourself and stay true to that list.
5. Smile more
I know it’s become a bit taboo (ESPECIALLY when suggested by some random dude), and plenty of women bristle when anyone suggests it.
But here’s the thing: smiling at men works.
A real, unforced smile— one that you actually mean— cuts through the world’s default grumpiness.
Men notice it instantly. It signals that you’re easy to be around, that you don’t sweat every little irritation, and that time with you will feel light and fun.
That kind of energy is rare, and it draws people in before a single word is spoken.
6. Put yourself out there
You will not meet anyone while hiding out in your living room complaining about being single.
You might not enjoy dating apps, but they can be effective when your mindset is light and free about it.
However, I realize that meeting men on dating apps seems to be getting harder and harder nowadays. Dating apps aren’t fresh and new anymore. Dating app fatigue can be real.
If this is true for you, you can try your hand at meeting someone organically.
Go to places where the kind of men you are drawn to actually spend time. If you don’t like to drink, don’t go hang out at a bar.
The magic happens when you try something new that you would enjoy even if you never exchanged numbers.
Take a cooking class, join a co-ed yoga group, sign up for a weekend biking adventure.
Whatever you picture yourself doing with a future boyfriend, start by doing it for yourself.
That energy sets everything in motion.
7. Check your baggage
Too many women spend years in therapy only to discover the real lesson: let the past go.
Everyone brings history into a relationship, but if you expect a man to constantly carry yours, you’ll end up alone.
Learn from past love and the teachers who came with it, then file those memories away for good.
There’s no space for someone new when your heart is packed with old stories you refuse to release.
8. Don’t fall for the myth you have to perform some perfect woman cosplay to get a boyfriend
We live in a culture of instant gratification.
It can feel like getting a boyfriend is just another quick win if you make yourself “easy” or “feminine” enough.
In other words, performing for an imaginary ideal doesn’t create closeness— it drives it away.
These beliefs only fuel more, deeper heartbreak.
It’s as though the perfect loving boyfriend is just around the corner if only you make yourself into someone else and try to keep the game going forever.
Until you’re exhausted and he’s bored and tired of the fake you, created to please him.
Research from the University of Turin shows that when people internalize beauty standards and monitor their own and their partner’s bodies, their relationship satisfaction drops.
This attitude also pushes women to treat love like an achievement, as if working harder will win a man’s devotion.
So we overperform: in bed, in the kitchen, everywhere. And then end up exhausted, brittle, angry and doing everything. It’s an unfair, outdated product of patriarchy.
Men are human beings too. And they aren’t a monolith.
Individual men have a wide, wide variety of preferences about what they are attracted to and who they will fall in love with.
You aren’t reading about how to get a boyfriend because you want a fake, cardboard cutout man who you don’t really know because you’re both hiding your true selves.
Men don’t exclusively fall in love with perfect fake women.
Loving and being loved isn’t about doing more work.
It’s about becoming someone you can genuinely fall in love with.
When you put yourself out there, build a life that excites you, stay open, and let him choose to show up, the right man will.
The right relationship doesn’t arrive because you hustled for it. It shows up because you were already living a life worth joining.
