As a matchmaker, I am not afraid to give clients, friends and even myself the tough-love treatment when it comes to managing our dating lives.

I’ll call you out if you are self-sabotaging. I’ll challenge you if you are being narrow-minded or shallow. And I’m the first to question you before you begin to blame fellow daters for the reason the date was oh so terrible.

I also stand by the belief that meeting your soulmate isn’t necessarily a choice.

Of course, if you hide in your bedroom for the rest of time, you’ll be significantly lowering your chances of meeting them.

But, ultimately, timing is in control of when you’ll meet your significant other. You could schedule a date for every night of the week to increase your probability of meeting someone but I still circle back to divine timing.

The much-loved stories I have that support my thesis are those friendships that have turned into romantic relationships. We all have a friend with a guy mate where the lines are slightly blurred.

At the back of their minds, they’ve always wondered if they could be more than just mates. I know people who were friends for ten-plus years before they started seeing each other as more than just friends.

Their soulmate had been there all along, but they weren’t scheduled, if you like, to fall in love with each other until they did. You could call it the power of timing.

There is a rising dating trend known as “thawing” about which I’ve heard whispers recently.

It describes the phenomenon of singles rekindling relations with exes who had called time on their relationship because, they now realise, of bad timing. You know, right person, wrong time. Well “thawing” is certainly giving a second chance to those with whom we may have unfinished business.

As I and my friends enter our 30th year, I have an admission. Your bubbly, optimistic matchmaker herself is feeling a little behind.

I cannot begin to describe the immense happiness I feel when friends and clients announce engagements, and we celebrate their weddings. I am their cheerleader at every goal post.

But amid all the happiness and joy I feel for everyone else there is just a tinge of sadness for myself. To be clear, I am not the single bitter friend.

In fact, I’ve spent the best part of my twenties defying that role. And being a spicy, young matchmaker has only added to my resolve.

But having said this, here I am finally acknowledging that it is OK to feel elation for others while feeling a slight disappointment for yourself. For myself.

It’s OK to aspire to not have the happy, healthy relationship with which your friends are blessed while being acutely aware it isn’t happening for you right now.

But as I enter my third decade, I am also becoming softer, if you like, about the realities of single life. They say that comparison is the thief of joy, and I couldn’t agree more. We’re all in the middle of our own story and who knows, our meet-cute could be just around the corner.

Like many singles swimming in the dating pool, I shall continue to wonder when it’ll be my time.

But I will also endeavour to stay firmly in the present and enjoy my 29th year around the sun.