"Especially around Valentine's Day, it's easy to find advice about sustaining a successful marriage, ..." — Stephanie Coontz

I've had the kind of complex life I write about. I was a single mother for 12 years. I'd been engaged. The wedding fell through. I then discovered I was pregnant and opted to have the child on my own. I was a professor. I was in my mid-30s. I could manage it financially.

Usually, Valentine's Day comes and goes with just a day or two of news media attention to courtship and marriage.

Valentine's Day is a perfect time to reject the idea that the ideal man is taller, richer, more knowledgeable, more renowned, or more powerful.

In my work as a historian and in my relationships as a friend, teacher, wife, and mother, I have come to think that the most useful way to understand the past and make it work for you is to look at the trade-offs and contradictions that, however deeply buried, can be uncovered in every memory, good or bad.