Last year, right around this time of year, Northampton based writer Linda McCullough Moore, reported from the front lines in the war against yet-one-more Valentine’s day alone, bemoaning the sad and soppy state of singlehood at the courageous age of 67, complete with a 17-point list of the basic characteristics of the man she thought she sought. And this year?

 I found him. Or, he found me. The man I had in mind. No, not strolling down Main Street in Northampton, but in a small, somewhat bizarre hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland. Two minutes into our first conversation, he exclaimed, “I just read your book.”

“So you’re the one,” I said.

In my experience, people who read your books imagine that they know you, as though you were just calling it fiction for fun.

This particular reader of mine immediately texted his friend back home in New York who Googled my name, resurrected my wish list from the commentary last Valentine’s Day and texted him back to say we two were a match made in heaven, or at the very least on public radio.

And she was right. This man, was exactly, I mean precisely, down to his serious love of Trinitarian theology and Girlyman, and his avowed aversion to rhubarb and John Updike, the very amalgam of my wish list, made up of equal parts of kindness and hilarity, warmth and world-class brilliance, not to mention having a well-honed devotion to solitude. (I love a man who understands I very often do not want to see him.)

I spent the next months awe-stricken at having met the one person on the planet with whom I shared 99.9 percent of my interests. He was, he is, a most amazing man. I loved him.  He loved me. It was a pure and decided pleasure, start to finish.

Yes, finish.

I should say, I can see you, you know.

You, there, moving closer to your radio, turning down the volume of your life, hoping I will tell you why a thing that was so wonderful could ever end. I can only tell you what I know at 68 that I did not know at 67: Shared interests are not everything.

This lovely man who wanted to take care of me had not the slightest interest in taking care of himself. Diets, exercise, doctors — not for him. I told him if he loved me, he’d change. He told me if I I loved him, I would accept him as he is. But nobody changed and nobody accepted. We parted best of friends.

Now Valentine’s Day is coming round again and so, like everybody else, we play the game, knowing even in the bottom of the 9th inning with two outs, and the worst batter in the history of the world on deck, there’s still a chance of finding love.