I Love Men. And That Might Be the Most Radical Thing I Say This Year.
I want to say something out loud that I don't hear much in wellness spaces right now.
I love men.
Not in a complicated, caveated, ‘some of my best friends are’ kind of way. I mean genuinely, warmly, with my whole chest — I love men. I love the way a good man shows up. I love the steadiness of it. The protectiveness. The quiet. The humor. The tenderness that doesn't always have words for itself but finds a way through anyway.
And I'm aware that saying this in 2026 is, apparently, a radical position to take.
Let Me Be Honest About Something
I have many reasons not to feel this way. Men have broken my heart. More than once. In ways that took real time, real grief, and real work to move through. I know what it feels like to love someone and have it end in a way that leaves you questioning what was even real. I know the particular loneliness of that.
And yet.
When I look back at those relationships — at the men who didn't show up the way I needed, who left — I don't feel hatred. I feel something quieter. Gratitude for what was real while it was real. Respect for the lessons that arrived wrapped in the hard parts. Recognition that they were doing the best they could with what they had, just like I was.
I am not naive about this. I am not in denial about it. I have simply chosen not to let pain become my philosophy. Instead, I choose to see these experiences as a portal — one that shifted me into a fuller, more aligned version of myself, where I am no longer searching for my worth in someone else's eyes.
What I Have Now
My partner makes me egg bites.
Not the Starbucks ones. His own version — made in batches, in his kitchen — and brings them to me to freeze for the week because he knows I love them and he wants me to have something good to reach for in the morning without having to think about it.
That's it. That's the whole story. A man who pays attention to what I love and quietly makes sure I have it.
He shows up emotionally in ways I didn't know I was allowed to ask for. He creates safety without being asked to. He plans and pays for our dates. He is present in the specific, particular, unglamorous ways that actually matter — not in the grand gesture version of love, but in the daily, consistent, I see you version. And most importantly — his presence puts me at ease and makes me want to take a nap, because my body is registering that I am safe. That is the parasympathetic nervous system doing exactly what it is supposed to do. That is not weakness. That is biology recognizing something real.
This is what I was always hoping was possible. And it is. It exists. I'm living inside it.
And I want to name something else that matters deeply to me. My best friend is a man. For five years, he has listened to me every single day — patiently, kindly, steadily. He has been one of those rare people who doesn't rush me, doesn't try to fix me, and doesn't make my feelings too much to hold. That kind of presence matters. Sometimes safety looks like someone staying on the phone a little longer. Sometimes it looks like being witnessed honestly, over and over again, until your body starts to understand that consistency is real.
And my brother — a school social worker who has built his entire career around showing up for underserved youth. Not loud. Not flashy. Just grounded, consistent, and deeply caring. The kind of presence that helps other people breathe a little easier.
These are the men in my life. This is what safe masculine energy actually looks like.
Something Got Twisted Along the Way
I understand where ‘decenter men’ came from.
And honestly — I understand it even more when I look at what keeps surfacing in the world. The Epstein files. The abuse of power by wealthy, untouchable men who treated human beings as commodities. The structures that protected them. The systems that looked away. The patriarchy — not as a buzzword, but as a real, documented, centuries-long architecture that has concentrated power in ways that have genuinely harmed people.
That is real.
I am not dismissing any of it.
I am a therapist. I have sat with people who were harmed by men who had power over them and used it as a weapon. I know what that does to a body. I know how long it takes to feel safe again. I know the particular way that betrayal by someone who was supposed to protect you rewires the nervous system.
So when I say I love men, I am not saying any of this isn’t true.
I am saying: the men who abuse power are not the whole story.
And building a collective philosophy around the worst examples of masculinity doesn’t dismantle the patriarchy. It just leaves everyone more isolated, more defended, and further from the kind of mutual accountability and genuine connection that actually creates change.
Patriarchy doesn’t just harm women. It harms men too — by demanding they perform dominance, suppress tenderness, and disconnect from the very emotional intelligence that makes them good partners, good fathers, good humans. The system is the problem. The gender is not.
Somewhere in the translation of that truth, a survival strategy became an ideology. And as someone who has sat with thousands of clients and watched what disconnection actually does to people — decentering love doesn’t dismantle broken systems. It just repackages the wound.
Here’s the other thing nobody wants to say: there are terrible women in this world too. There are people of every gender who wound, who abandon, who take more than they give. Cruelty is not a gendered trait. Neither is tenderness. Neither is the capacity to devastate or to create safety.
Generalizing an entire gender as the source of your pain is not liberation. It’s a way of staying inside the story of what happened to you — just with a different name on it.
What the Nervous System Actually Needs
Here's what I know from 20+ years of clinical practice and the nervous-system-based science of how the human body actually shifts into safety: we are not built for isolation.
Polyvagal theory tells us that we regulate through relationship. We come back to ourselves through the steady presence of another. Through being seen. Through physical proximity to someone whose nervous system says safe.
This is not weakness. This is not dependency. This is biology.
When we build a philosophy that tells people to contract away from half of humanity — to view a whole gender as a threat to their peace rather than a possible source of it — we are asking the nervous system to do something it was never designed to do. We are asking it to heal by severing.
It doesn't work that way.
This Is Where Your Pet Comes In
You might be wondering — what does my dog have to do with my dating life? Everything.
When your nervous system is stuck in a stress response because of past relationship pain, you aren't just thinking about men — your body is reacting to them. Old experiences get stored in the tissues, in the guarding, in the way you brace before someone can leave.
This is where your pet becomes your most powerful co-regulator.
Your pet offers your nervous system something almost nothing else can replicate: a signal of pure, uncomplicated safety. No history. No agenda. No risk of judgment. By practicing connection with your pet — really feeling their presence, their warmth, their steady breath — you are training your body to recognize what safety actually feels like.
This is the foundation of the Pet Medicine Method©. It's not about using your animal as a tool. It's about the bond you already have recalibrating your internal compass — so that when you do encounter a good, steady person, your body doesn't mistake their peace for boredom or their presence for a threat.
What We're Actually Talking About Is Energy
Here's what I believe — and what the Pet Medicine Method© is quietly built on:
Every one of us carries both masculine and feminine energy inside us. The capacity to protect and the capacity to receive. The drive and the softness. The fire and the water. The structure and the flow.
These are not gendered traits that belong to one body or another. They are human traits. They live in all of us — in different proportions, in different seasons, in different relationships.
The healing isn't about which gender you center or decenter. It's about learning to honor both energies within yourself — and then being able to recognize and receive them when they show up in someone else.
When my partner makes me egg bites, that's masculine energy in its most loving form — I will provide for you. I will think of you. I will make sure you're taken care of. When I let myself receive that without deflecting or making it smaller, that's feminine energy doing its actual work — I am worth being cared for. I can let love in. Both of those things are medicine.
Your Pet Already Knows This
Winnie doesn't categorize who she loves. She doesn't assess whether someone has earned presence based on their gender or their history or their potential to disappoint her. She reads energy. She reads safety. She moves toward warmth and away from threat — not away from whole categories of being.
Animals don't decenter. They attune.
And attunement — that quiet, body-to-body recognition that another living being is here, is safe, is real — is the exact mechanism through which healing happens.
The Pet Medicine Method© is built on this. Not just the animal-to-human bond, but the principle underneath it: connection is the medicine. Not connection with the right kind of person in the right configuration. Just connection. Genuine, mutual, nervous-system-level showing up for one another.
That's what heals.
Healing Isn't Subtraction
I rebuilt my life. I rebuilt my identity. I found my sovereignty — the real kind, the kind that lives in the body and doesn't need anyone else's permission to exist.
And here's what I found on the other side: wholeness doesn't push people away. It draws the right ones closer.
I'm not interested in shrinking my world to stay safe. I'm interested in building a nervous system that can hold more — more love, more intimacy, more aliveness, more of the full and sometimes terrifying experience of being in relationship with other humans.
Including men. Especially men, actually.
Because when a good, present man walks into the room and his nervous system says you're safe here — something in me remembers what I was always capable of feeling.
That's not weakness.
That's medicine.
Today's Invitation
If you've been hurt — by men, by women, by love itself — that pain is real. It deserves to be honored.
And.
What if the path forward isn't building walls around a whole gender? What if it's learning to honor the masculine and feminine energies that already live inside you — and then staying open enough to recognize them when they show up in someone else?
The answer isn't less love. It's more capacity to receive it.
Your pet is already showing you how.
Ready to start your journey with Pet Medicine?
If you’re feeling ready to explore how the human-animal bond can help you regulate your nervous system and find your way back to yourself, I’d love to support you.
👉 Check out our resources and join the community here!
About the Founder
Jennifer Bronsnick, MSW, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker with over 20 years of experience supporting anxiety, ADHD, and emotional overwhelm. She is the founder of Paws 4 Wellness and the creator of Pet Medicine: a gentle, science-backed framework that uses the human–animal bond to help people feel safer in their bodies, reconnect with themselves, and build everyday emotional resilience. Jennifer believes pets are not just companions — they’re teachers, anchors, and reminders of what unconditional love feels like.
Explore pet-powered practices, free resources, and the Paws 4 Wellness community:
👉 https://linktr.ee/paws4wellness