“I dated earnestly through my 20s and 30s. I showed up. I tried.” Valentine’s Day has always arrived with a tone that is half celebration, half inventory. Every February, the world seems to ask the same questions: Are you progressing correctly? Are you paired off, promised, planning? The holiday turns intimacy into something pu blic, measured by reservations made in advance, flowers delivered on time, and the unspoken assumption that love should be visible, legible and ideally moving toward