If you don’t wish to go for hit-and-miss method, you can go for ‘Get to Know’ option right from the start and know about the other sims’ interests and other things.
You can also talk about your interests like cooking, music, video games, etc. The icons on top of the other sims’ heads will indicate a conversation’s success or failure. Keeping this in mind, start off with a casual conversation and then work your way to the relationships. Ideally, you should look for sims with similar traits and aspiration to make things smooth.
Each sim in the game has different aspirations and traits which make them react in different ways. These two things play a major role in determining the course of a relationship.