Monday Moments: Choosing To Love

This month, we’re continuing our theme of Choices. And, ahead of Valentine’s Day on the 14th, I wanted to showcase writing about relationship choices, reflecting on the work of staying, returning and committing. Next week’s Thoughtful Tuesday page completes the picture, coming at similar questions from an angle shaped by memory, humour and cultural change over time. Together, our pages reflect two ways of thinking about what it means to choose love.

Dating apps are de rigueur today, and many people find their other halves online. But I sometimes wonder whether dating apps are taking the magic out of finding a relationship. They give people a curatorial approach to dating, allowing them to ‘hand-select’ from a long (and filtered) list. People are wonderful and surprising, and I question how useful ‘must-haves’ are when it comes to matters of the heart.

We’ve optimised every area of our lives, including romance, and there’s something that feels reductive about this to me. After all, relationships require work; they rely on each person taking responsibility and having some self-awareness. To have a healthy relationship, I truly believe you need to be humble enough to accept and work on your stuff and I wonder whether this is hindered by the endless stream of potential suitors you’ll likely find on an app. The easier option will always be to choose someone else, but perhaps we’re giving up on each other – and ourselves – too easily?

I’m probably biased, either way. I met my partner IRL (in real life) at a point when I wasn’t even looking. I’m lucky, in this regard. Our relationship never came with the pressure or complications that I think dating apps can bring and, having done things the old-fashioned way, I’m perhaps being overly cynical about how online romances can blossom, and authentically so.

The pieces I’ve chosen for my page this month explore themes of life, love, and online dating. Whether you’re celebrating Valentine’s, Galentine’s, or being happily single this year, it’s never a bad thing to choose love.

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First up, Claire Buckle writes about modern dating through the lens of a mother and daughter.

The Big Ask

I know it’s coming – the question always gets slotted in somewhere during our conversations.

Today, Mum and I are in the café where we’ve met for lunch. She puts her sandwich down, dabs her mouth with a napkin and smiles. Here it comes. I brace myself.

After my last relationship ended two years ago, I signed up to online dating. That’s how most people seem to meet these days. It’s just that I’ve had no luck. I’ve been out with men, but nothing has lasted longer than a few months. Nobody on the free sites seems serious about settling down and now I’m in my late thirties… well, I do understand why Mum wants to know if I’ve met anyone.

My parents were incredibly happy together until Dad died, and I know she worries I’ll end up alone.

But today I’ve decided to tell her I’m no longer on the dating scene. That I’ve chosen to embrace being single, because my whole life was being consumed by the effort of trying to connect with someone. I want to feel content with my life as it is. I have a job I love and a close-knit group of friends, male and female.

She leans in. “So, Jade…”

“Please, Mum,” I interrupt. “Don’t even ask. You know the answer. I’m not dating anyone and I’m not going to meet anybody online ever again because I’ve deleted my profile.”

She arches her eyebrows, surprise flickering across her face. “Oh,” she says softly. “OK.” Then she takes a deep breath. “But that’s not what I wanted to ask.” Her voice is tentative. “I know it’s only been a year since your father passed, but… I was wondering how you’d feel if I went on a date?”

She hesitates, a nervous smile tugging at her lips. “You see… I’ve met someone online.”

© Claire Buckle, 2025

Connect with Claire on Instagram: @cloubuckle

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Next, poet Isabelle Audiger reflects on a love story, which has a spectral presence in the piece.

I Cannot Unlove Easily

The poet has read all her poems
She’s decided to take a break and sit back
She’s not sure she likes the story between the lines
Especially if there is no story left
Only weak words and a broken dream
An illusion lost in a foggy landscape
The memory of water
And shapes
Ghosts dancing
Sometimes singing or laughing
The poet cannot be sure
But she has to decide
What the next word
Will be

© Isabelle Audiger, 2026

Follow Isabelle on Instagram: @isabelleaudiger and Facebook: @isaudiger.

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Finally, we have a prose piece by Sarah Frideswide, a bridge between my January page and this February page. Sarah’s piece reveals a creative journey that has come full circle. The writer, choosing love for her work, returns to a project years later, to follow a path she thought lost. I love these kinds of passion projects in writing, because they speak to the power and pull of the written word.

Resurrecting Scraps

The writing life is more like a maze with multiple routes to the centre than a straightforward path through a field. It wasn’t until recently I began to understand the truth of this.

It happened because of my MA final project. I had planned on writing a semi-humorous novel loosely based on my time living in an Anglican convent with nuns. I spent nine months prior to the project creating a fictional convent, crafting characters, developing back story, planning settings, including making maps and building plans. Then, in my first supervision for the project, my supervisor tore the idea to shreds. Or that’s what it felt like. It didn’t have a strong enough plot, there was no jeopardy, I was straying too close to my own trauma… the list went on. By the end of the session, it felt as though my hard work was in scraps on the floor in front of me, along with my confidence. What’s more, I had only 24 hours to find something fresh to submit for my feedback session with the visiting author the following week.

In desperation – and knowing that one of my strengths as a writer lay in portraying unusual characters in a humorous way – I reached for my military experience and wrote a passage about one night in December when I was on STAG (sentry duty) at 3 am in -5°C and with my chocolate supplies having run out.

That idea turned into a cycle of four short stories about military life as a woman which gained me a Distinction for my MA. It’s now evolved into an even bigger project, which is the subject of an Arts Council funding application and a collaboration with a veterans’ organisation.

What of the tattered remains of my convent idea? I put the notebook away and moved on… Until my first application for Arts Council funding was turned down back in August and I needed to generate income fast. A friend suggested I start a serialised story on Substack and charge a subscription fee for people to read it.

My need for money being urgent, I went back to my nuns. I had a whole world full of characters and backstory ready to go. What’s more, the very lack of a centralised plot which would have been a drawback to it in novel form, is a strength in the format of soap-opera fiction which I’ve created. My income relies on being able to keep the story going with different plot lines for an interminable period of time.

I had the first episode written, produced and published within 48 hours. This time with the addition of a ghost and a talking kitten, both based on local folklore. The maze which is the writing life had brought me back to a path I thought I’d left behind, but when the right moment came, I picked up the scraps my supervisor left on the floor and made them into something fresh.

© Sarah Frideswide, 2026

Connect with Sarah on Instagram: @sarahfrideswide

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Issue 27, featuring Sarah Westcott is out now. You will find it in libraries and other outlets. Alternatively, all current and previous editions can be found on our magazines page here.

You can hear great new ideas, creative work and writing tips on Write On! Audio. Find us on all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Google Podcasts and Spotify. Type Pen to Print into your browser and look for our logo, or find us on Podcasters.Spotify.com.

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“People are wonderful and surprising, and I question how useful ‘must-haves’ are when it comes to matters of the heart.”