The world becomes magical when the right person says, ‘I love you’

By David McElroy · November 23, 2025

It felt as though my heart was going to explode with joy.

She loved me. She told me she loved me. I had already fallen in love with her, but I was terrified that maybe she might not love me in return. And then came those magical words.

“I love you, David.”

As long as she loved me, nothing else mattered. We could overcome any problem. I could climb any mountain that our relationship required me to climb. I could be whatever I needed to be. The world changed in that moment — all because she loved me.

We loved each other deeply. We said the words — both aloud and in writing — all the time. (What you see above is a screenshot of her very own keystrokes from an email I still have. I still have all of them.) We expressed the feelings to one another in ways that made the world seem alive and magical. The world was bright and loving and perfect, all because she loved me and I loved her.

Until everything changed. My heart was broken and bruised. So was hers. But why?

If love is real, does it ever completely die? I really don’t think so. But a love can lose so much of its meaning that it’s just a faded memory. Losing the intensity and intoxication of early love leaves a mark on the heart. It hurts. It stings.

But does that mean I regret feeling the intense joy? Does that mean that if love isn’t going to stay for life, it’s not worth experiencing? Of course not.

I’ve fallen in love like this only a handful of times. And every time it happens, it feels bigger, deeper, more necessary than before. When I’m not in love, I feel the absence like a low-grade ache. There’s an emptiness I can’t fill with work or hobbies or distractions. But I also know I can’t force love to appear. It comes when it wants to. It refuses to obey logic or planning.

And when it does arrive, it changes everything again. Suddenly the world feels hopeful. Ordinary moments feel charged. You wake up eager. You feel the future reaching toward you instead of slipping away from you. No matter how many times it’s happened, the feeling is always new. It never loses its power.

I’ve been thinking about that lately because a friend has recently fallen in love. She’s giddy and emotional and wildly happy. All because a love has come that is better than anything she’s ever experienced. She loves him — and he loves her just as strongly.

I’m happy for her. Truly. But talking with her has stirred up something in me. I miss this kind of love. I miss the transformation it brings. I miss feeling chosen and wanted and safe. I miss waking up with my heart racing for good reasons instead of bad ones.

When love is real and it brings two hearts together in this sort of way, it’s one of the very best experiences of life. Whether it lasts or not, real love changes everything while it’s filling our hearts and changing the shape of our minds.

How many times have I felt this? I’m not sure anymore. Early memories blur and soften. But I remember believing each time that this must be the deepest love I could ever feel. And then I proved myself wrong.

I still carry gratitude for every woman I’ve ever loved. Even when things ended in confusion or pain, I can’t hold bitterness. Each of these women gave me joy. Each gave me hope. Each gave me moments when the world felt enchanted.

I still have intense feelings about one woman, but I doubt she knows that anymore. Maybe I’m wrong, though. Who knows? We didn’t end up together — and it’s too late for us to have what we both wanted — but that doesn’t stop me from being filled with thoughts and feelings about what might have been.

And still, I hope. I hope for the next time love walks into my life without warning. I hope for the moment when my heart shifts again and I know I’ve found something real. Something magical.

And I hope for the day I’ll hear those words again — “I love you, David” — and that I can believe, even for a moment, that love has finally come to stay.

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I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

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