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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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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The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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