Dating Feels Like HR; Let’s Fix That #118

Dating shouldn’t feel like an HR interview. We dive straight into how personhood forms through early bonds and how those patterns quietly script who we chase, who we avoid, and why some relationships feel like home while others feel like work. Jack Bohanan, certified Somatic relationship coach, brings a grounded, experiential approach to attachment that moves beyond labels and into lived change—where the body, boundaries, and honest feedback reshape your style of relating.

We unpack the classic anxious–avoidant loop in plain language and talk about how to build secure behaviors without turning your identity into a diagnosis. Jack explains why Somatic’s client-centered, experiential sessions can feel “more therapeutic than therapy,” including consent-based touch, explicit boundary practice, and practitioner ownership of projections. You’ll hear simple but powerful skills—receiving a compliment without deflecting, pausing for regulation, and making small specific requests—that create a new internal map you can carry into love.

Then we zoom out to culture. Jack shares a vivid story from Colombia that contrasts U.S. dating with unfiltered feminine expression and examines the current tug-of-war between gender essentialism and neutrality. Biology matters, but it isn’t destiny; roles evolve with safety, technology, and independence. The goal isn’t to cosplay retro polarity, but to meet as two whole people whose energy fits because both are present and real. Expect honest nuance, practical takeaways, and a humane path toward connection that feels alive and steady at the same time.

If this conversation sparks something, tap follow, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review. Your words help more people find the show and build relationships that actually work.

Chapters

• 0:00 Framing Personhood And Relationships
• 2:45 Attachment Theory Without The Labels
• 6:00 Inside The Somatica Method
• 10:30 Receiving Affection And Boundaries
• 14:02 Gender Polarity And Lived Truths
• 20:22 Culture Shock: Colombian Love Story
• 25:52 Preference, Roles, And Modern Independence
• 31:22 Critiquing Extremes: Essentialism Vs Neutrality

Transcript

Intro: 0:00

Welcome to the Straight from the Source's Mouth Podcast. Frank talk about sex and dating.

Tamara: 0:05

Hello, Tamra here. Welcome to the show. Today's guest is Jack Bohanan, a certified Somatica relationship coach. Thanks for joining me, Jack.

Jack: 0:14

Thank you. Thank you for having me on and entertaining this wild last-minute idea of like, okay, well, let's phrase things as how personhood forms, because oh my goodness, that's a big topic. But I think it affects a lot of how we relate to each other, how we date. It's universal and uh really social. We need people. We need people to prop us up early in life, and we need our partners to be there for us and be a sounding board too. So what do you see in relationships that you've heard about or had yourself in terms of how we affect one another? Like just an open conversation. How do how do people affect other people in a way that influences our personalities?

Tamara: 1:03

Yeah, I mean, I've thought two different ways there. I mean, obviously, childhood parents are caregivers. That's you're born into whatever philosophy they have and become that generally at first. And then the other side is relationships where you know you you influence them a lot. Like Layla and Alex Ramosi. I listen watch listen to them and they both talk about that. How you have the person you marry is like the most important person because they're gonna either help you grow and become amazing or take you down. Yeah.

Jack: 1:34

So absolutely. Or handicap you, really. And I think we kind of get locked into boxes of who people believe that we're supposed to be. And I know that I've been in that box before of perpetuating somebody else's expectations. Like, oh, I'm supposed to be this person around this, this in this way and act in this way. So yeah, it's it's interesting how that happens. And I see that in my clients, that I am a relationship coach for women mostly. And they often are locked into the same pattern with one partner or the same pattern with the same partner over and over with a different face. That's a really common description. Like, okay, I'm dating the same person over and over. So the question of how that happens is like you said, very early in its origin, that it's something that we get framed, we get framed in a particular shape in childhood, and then carry that forward into adult relationships a lot of the time, and then choose that partner, that person, based on whatever we knew of life in childhood. So we're like circling around the topic of attachment theory. And if you want to go straight headlong into it, it's something that I work with clients on a lot of the time. Yeah. That early relationships influence later ones.

Tamara: 2:57

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that we can definitely go into that. And like I said, we've had a few, but you know, there's over a hundred episodes, so people pick and choose and might not have heard the other ones related to this. For sure. And obviously, your tick's gonna be different essentially.

Jack: 3:12

So I know that attachment theory is really popular and it's something that affected my life and my trajectory a lot of that early conditioning that I received. And it's basically the idea that we end up in one of several categories of the style of our relating based on those early experiences. So I recommend that everyone move away from labels. You know, I don't think labels serve us very much as humans, but it is helpful to understand a little bit of our type and how we came to be the way that we are so that we can recognize patterns and then shift things by having new experiences. So for listeners who are completely new to this, I might recommend checking out the site attachmentproject.com. It's not something that I'm associated with, but it's a reputable, more research-backed source for information on attachment theory. Attachment theory divides people into three categories of insecure attachment, where they're struggling to relate to other people, and then also the category of having secure attachment, which means that ah, I'm fine with relationships, I'm fine with being alone, I have a baseline for connecting with people and also being alone with myself. So there are four categories total. And most people, when they learn about this, feel like the sky part that, oh, this makes so much sense. My relationship makes sense now. I'm exactly that type, and my partner is this way. This puts everything in order and it fits us so well. So the most classic depiction of this is someone who feels more overwhelmed by connection, someone who's avoidant is the term that applies, that they're avoiding connection or feeling overstimulated by how the other person wants to connect. And then someone who's more anxious about the attachment with their partner, and they're likely to feel distressed when the partner pulls away. So when people learn just a little bit more about this, they realize, oh my goodness, this is us. Exactly. And there's another type that combines the two, and it's kind of tricky, but uh we can just basically leave it out of this discussion, this brief discussion. But my work with clients is really around moving away from some of those labels based on re-experiencing new parts of having relationships. And I'm trained in a method called the Somatica method that I believe is brilliant and more therapeutic than therapy because it incorporates re-experiencing relationships, of re-experiencing what it's like to be in connection with somebody where you can set boundaries and have open communication and have everything focused on the needs of the client. As we enter into this relationship between practitioner and client, everything is focused on the needs of the client without me as the other person trying to get my relational needs met through them, which is so common in like every other relationship. Of course, everyone is looking to satisfy their own relational needs or play out their own insecurities. And the beautiful thing about the Somatica method is that it allows a clean focus on the client, but also reflects on whatever the practitioner has going on, whatever's arising in their nervous system. And it takes me as the practitioner owning a lot of those things of my tendencies and what I might be projecting onto the client. So I find it so much more relational than therapy in one way. And while I work mostly on Zoom, in-person sessions in the Somatica method of sex and relationship coaching can include touch of experiencing what arousal feels like or what our core desires are in relationship. It's radically different than therapy, and I'm I'm a fan.

Tamara: 7:20

Sounds like it sounds radically different. And yeah, I can see where that would be appealing for the people that don't know about the arousal touch part of themselves.

Jack: 7:31

Some people don't get in touch with themselves. They don't have the safety in their intimacy to really experience or play with, experiment with what it's like to be them, what feels good, uh, where boundaries are uh what it's like to receive kindness or affection. That's foreign for a lot of people. It's really difficult for a lot of people, myself included, to like receive an enthusiastic compliment and just not reciprocate, just be like, ah, thanks. So much of the time when I don't know if this is true for you, but so much of the time when we receive a compliment from somebody, we're like, oh, this old thing, I this the this shirt, no. Um we should just take it in, we should put it in our back pocket and say, ah, thanks. Yeah.

Tamara: 8:22

So I've gotten to where I just say thank you, but yeah, it's always easy.

Jack: 8:26

Cool. Yeah. It's nice when somebody can receive us, and somebody can receive our kindness too, for sure. Yeah. And um, as you mentioned, I have had an inquiry into what comes up between people of two genders and and what's meant by polarity, because that's a really interesting topic, too. And I had a beautiful wild experience of that that set in motion my podcast, wherein I interview a bunch of strangers anonymously about what it's been like to be their gender in their country, having their relationships. Like, what has that felt like in your own way, in your own words? What's it like to be you? And I really enjoyed just running around talking to people, talking to uh shamans in the Amazon, or um some guy I met on a boat, like like just really random, non-authoritative folks, because uh there's so much interest in that topic societally and in academia of what is gender, what is um true, and really what's true is whatever's coming up for us in the moment and whatever we feel. So the kind of truth where so-and-so said this to me, and I felt this way. That's deeply true. That's really bedrock profound. Assuming we're taking that person in good faith and honoring their truth, which I don't see a reason not to. It was an awesome project, and um I'm pretty much done with it now. I've satisfied my personal inquiry about that topic and have thoughts that offend everyone. So um uh I don't see anyone as being right or wrong. There is a renewed interest in gender polarity of masculine, feminine, this and that. And then uh recent academic assist insistence that's no, every everyone is uh neutral in this way, and gender is a social construct, and I don't see it that way, that there's any deep call for essentialism, gender essentialism, or that there's neutrality, that everything is just something we made up. So that middle ground um is a strange place to inhabit. And um yeah, I it's one of my favorite topics to uh bring up, but it's also really divisive. So I'm careful about how I present ideas. And um I'm curious about yours. You you said you've discussed this on other other shows.

Tamara: 12:01

Yeah, I was just gonna say that I know some people say you're a man and woman can have both feminine and masculine energy, so it's um it can be looked that way. Yeah. But it does seem like in my experience, it's more true that men are the men have more masculinity, and the ones that do have more masculinity, it works better for them, and the woman that has more femininity or female energy, like the two together work well.

Jack: 12:29

Yeah.

Tamara: 12:30

Or you can have the opposite, I guess. A man with more feminine energy and the woman with more masculine energy works for them, potentially, but I wouldn't want that.

Jack: 12:41

Yeah, there you go. There's a degree of personal preference in it. And I think that there are some qualities that are thematic for male-bodied people versus qualities that are thematic for female-bodied people. And it doesn't mean that everyone can't be as they are. I strongly insist that we allow people to be as they are. Like however you want to define yourself, great. And we kind of get into an identity politics mode that uh there's uh there's a understanding of gender that applies to 80% of people that are cisgender heterosexual. It's the majority of people. And uh where we sometimes run aground is we look at uh a minority of people who have this special, unique, exceptional orientation to gender or sexuality. And it need not confound what's thematic for a lot of people. So there may be some themes for male-bodied people and female-bodied people, but it doesn't mean that that's an expectation for someone who's in the minority and wants to define themselves otherwise. So having that insistence creates a lot of freedom to look at other things, to explore, right, what is essential for men or women or like edging up against something essential. Um and right now in academia, there's a lot of activism-driven gender theory that things should be different than they are. Everyone should be included. The themes of gender for men and women should be neutralized as something that's oppressive. And it's like there was a thesis that originated before any hypothesis. So there's a strong drive to prove something in that mindset that I don't think serves science. So activism-driven sociology hasn't arrived at the place that they would have liked it to either. That um we defunded Planned Parenthood, we've overturned Roe versus Wade. Like it's it's uh it's not the um the perfect world that the activists envisioned in academia. So I think that coming to something that's more representative, more ergonomic, a theory that's more ergonomic to more people, is where we'll gravitate to one way or the other. But it's curious to me the interest, the renewed interest in gender polarity, because so much is changing in our world. There's so many things, and we feel like we don't have ground to stand on. And we don't have roles that we play anymore. There aren't these contrived roles of the man does this and the woman does that, which is great. I'm all for that. Absolutely. But people want to look back to something that is more gender essentialist and try to embody new or like retro ways of being masculine or feminine that that might not serve us that well. So, in terms of what I preach to my clients, preach, um, is that a lot of times they're seeking their feminine essence, they're trying to connect with some sort of uh soft flowing nature that they'll have. And, you know, maybe that's a fit for them, but what's most profound for connecting with another person is being ourselves. That if we're able to feel so healed and complete in ourselves that we're very natural, that's what the modern version of feminine or masculine is. Because those things have changed a lot through time. There are some themes that apply situationally, but what was masculine 500 years ago, very different than what's what's adaptive for men right now. So Yeah.

Tamara: 17:14

In your in your travels, did you find your theory was proved proven? Or like what did you see in different countries or different or any wherever wherever you want to go with the travel side of it?

Jack: 17:28

Um I didn't have a theory at the outset. And my um my experience was that um before this topic interest me, I connected with a woman on a first date, and she had some wild, deeply feminine swooning experience. And this was in Colombia with a woman who's of Colombian and Italian origin. And she's an artist, so she's like all of the all the girly and all the spice. And um that experience really opened my eyes because she uh was very um she acted like a crazy person within an hour of meeting me. She was declaring her love, she was dysregulated and falling over. It was some sort of like spiritual thing. She was feeling every emotion at level 11 intensity. It was delightful to watch. And that really perked up my ears to there's something here in this culture that is gone in the United States. We've trampled and dismissed and dismembered this type of femininity, if you wanted to call it that. That here's this counterpoint experience that I was unclear on, but it was delightful to me. It was like, ooh, electricity up my spine in those moments, and I felt called to be very upright and um protective of her because she needed it. Like she's uh rolling around on the ground laughing. Like, what do I do with this crazy person? Um, who was completely sane and sound before and also after. So she got hit with the love lightning. I think just because she felt safe. And that piqued my interest about this topic, because that's not something you'd find in the United States. In the United States, our dates feel like interviews with HR. And here's all the magic, all the fire, uh, giggling, uh, completely losing her mind in love. Wow. So that was phenomenal. It was a really cool connection. Didn't work out romantically, ultimately. And uh I would love to have seen more feminist reforms in in her world. Like I would love a moment of um degendered communication, of a deeply um equal experience of communication skills. Like I don't want to be stuck in any sort of role play, and I want a lot of responsibility in my partner. Even if something is close to like this dynamic, dramatic gender dance. That we sometimes inhabit. I really want a partner who's steady and not so emotionally fiery that she's gonna blow away in the wind. I want communication skills and somebody who's gonna be very open and um clean in the communication with me. And oh the the radiant love coming from this person, beautiful. See, there was so much availability there with her in one sense. She was so human and available. It's a very compelling experience for me for both of us. But that was my thesis, so to speak. That was the counterpoint to the rest of my life, was that there's really, really something there between men and women where we're radically different. The messages that I'd received in the West as a liberal thinking man was that we should be dramatically equal and undifferentiated. And the rest of the world that hasn't experienced those kind of progressive reforms, they're running on um something closer to gender essentialism, where people see a castrel for women that some things are appropriate for women and other things are appropriate for men. There's a lot of limitation in that. Yeah.

Tamara: 22:25

A little more equal, but but you could see the draw of it. And that's what a lot of men talk about is when the woman is so feminine like that, the energy, it just you you're drawn to want to protect and save the woman.

Jack: 22:38

Yeah.

Tamara: 22:38

So I can see the benefit of that, but then you're on her side being a little bit.

Jack: 22:42

There is something like that. And uh I mean, there is some call to service in the incompletion of someone. So it's kind of cool where the two members of a couple are incomplete in that you need each other in some way. There's something that we're providing or receiving from our partner that we can't quite access ourselves. But really, we can in a lot of ways. Right now, as our society and our economies are formed, women are very sufficient. They're very uh financially capable. A lot of the uh burdens of childbirth have been removed, either if they choose to have children or they certainly have the option of not having children. So those kind of things restructure our society and our family. And right now we're at a point where we don't need each other, where there isn't a call to service for men in this way or anything incomplete about women. Whereas if someone is so dramatic in their representation of some of those traditional traits, it does leave a lot of room for receiving or a lot of room for something dramatic where the where the peg goes in the hole. Like that there's some almost physical or energetic potential for union in that. And right now we're very independent entities, and that's an interesting change, and I see it as a positive change, but people still want to play with those energies of masculinity and femininity, and they often look to the past to do it. They idolize some sort of homemaker situation from the 1950s and then try to mix in um some thinking that makes that more palat palatable. And you know, if you want to um really step on those guys' toes, the retro gender polarity crowd, if like when they when they get into that thinking, the the first thing that they'll the first concession they'll make is like, well, men have feminine energy and women have masculine energy. So why are we still talking about masculinity and femininity at that point? Why is that your energy system? Or why is that your typology of dividing things into masculinity and femininity if you're gonna immediately disassociate the things from male-bodied people and female-bodied people? So that's a real um a real bug in their bonnet, so to speak, of like, okay, you immediately uh break down what you were talking about by saying men have feminine blah, blah, blah. Yeah, so they make an immediate counterpoint to their uh two-part typology. Um and then on the flip side of things, people who are really progressive or feminist and very much in the camp of gender neutrality. If I were to point out that female-bodied people make babies and male-bodied people are on average better at lifting heavy stuff, the conversation just goes south. I'm like a hate monger at that point. So um, those really are the constraints that we see as male-bodied and female-bodied people, is I'm a little bit better at lifting heavy stuff, and you're way, way better at making babies. So um, yeah, and how that applies based on the kind of environment that we're in, whether we're living to be 80 or whether we're living to be 25 on average, which humans did for most of our history, that makes a huge difference in how gender naturally breaks down. And it's it's not something we're making up whatsoever. It's it's arranged around um it's arranged around society. So in one way, it's a social construct, but society is a biological construct where people are surviving together. And for a lot of our history, that was more urgent. That society was a biological construct, more so than something that we're making up as super rich, luxurious people. So we're we're so, we're so far from having real problems in my mind. Like our my fridge is full. And um, our society in one way in the West is really stable if we're in a peaceful country. So that makes gender a very, very different topic, and uh, it presents new realities that uh are luxurious in respect to the people a thousand years ago who were living to the age of 25, on average, like really high childhood mortality. Um yeah, it's it's something that we've kind of forgotten about, I think. We live in a really decadent world.

Tamara: 28:05

And um Yeah, it's not just stuff we're making up. Yeah, I was gonna say they refer to those first world problems, like all the stuff that aren't really problems to most of us. But I w I was gonna ask, do you think going back to your the woman you met in Columbia, do you think your avoidant tendencies, which you had mentioned in your you haven't mentioned in the show, but I know from your um info that you were an avoidance. Would you say her being so radiantly in love was kind of scared your avoidance parts?

Jack: 28:39

I like that kind of question. Yeah, thank you for that question. No, I don't. I really wanted more. I wanted more from her, I wanted um a more sustainable, embodied type of connection. I wanted a deeper personal connection in terms of our shared style and interests. So in one way she was wildly there and available in moments of just radiant love and of flowing fantastic spontaneity, but really I wanted more connection than that could deliver because yeah, that's there. We had like uh beautiful um wordless moments of connection together that were very um spiritual or loving. It's just like, oh my goodness, it's so easy to love this person, but then at the same time, I wanted to connect more, I wanted a better communication and a deeper understanding, and it was almost like whatever love lightning hit was disorienting. That um, yeah, I mean, you've seen the nature show where the the baby duck imprints on the donkey, and the baby duck thinks the donkeys it's it's um or whatever similar story is out there. So there was something so intense and beautiful that happened that it was almost like this this process of fixation where those powerful energies or or whatever that dynamic of love and connection was, it just came out of the heavens and hit us with a thunderbolt, and it almost made us forget that we're kind of mismatched in a lot of ways.

Tamara: 30:47

Okay. So I know you also, well, you have clients and you're a a relation. Certified somatic relationship coach. Do you want to share how people can work with you and or reach you? And you're you said you had a podcast, you get to talk about that too. Yeah, we can go into a little bit more after if you want.

Jack: 31:08

Cool. Thanks. Yeah, well, we're covering a lot of ground. I like it. Um, I'm a I am indeed a relationship coach, and the work I do is often around attachment issues and reclaiming self through relationship. Most of my clients are women, and women often haven't had the experience of working with a man in depth. So there's something liberating about that. It's a very bold type of client who engages a man as a therapist or coach. It's also really powerful. A lot of leverage in working with someone across the gender divide. There's a lot of trust that's needed for that and a very high rate of return that comes from that trust of like, okay, I'm going straight into my woman issues. And I've done that. I've had a female therapist that I worked with who's like, okay, I'm doing it. I know I have issues with women. I'm going to go find a female therapist and sort some of this out. So to do that, powerful. And to have new experiences of relationship in a safe container, whether it's on Zoom, and I work mostly on Zoom, or whether it's in person, it creates a new map for taking that out into the world with your current partner or future partners, where it's like, okay, I know what it's like to be me in connection with somebody. I had things move through. I know what it's like to set boundaries or explore something at depth when I know that I can stop the clock and kind of raise my hand and process whatever's going on. So doing that work with a lot of awareness of our body of what's actually going on for us internally is powerful in that things come up and move through. Whatever traumas and dramas are down there, often come up when things feel really safe and we're with someone and regulated and feeling whatever is happening in our belly. Like, okay, the tightness in in our shoulders becomes burning, scalding hot, and then something releases and it feels way better. So that kind of thing um lights me up. I'm so honored to be doing this work. It's fantastic. And um yeah, I like it.

Tamara: 33:45

And do you have a website or a like how can people reach you to if they do want to work with you?

Jack: 33:52

Yeah, I have my website, jackbohannon.com forward slash heel, and that'll get you a great webinar, and you can also poke around on that site and find out about group coaching and other good stuff, but jackbohannon.com forward slash heel. And I wish my name was easier to spell, but I'm just gonna hope that you put it in the show notes because it's it's cumbersome.

Tamara: 34:20

Yeah, yeah. At least it's mostly how it sounds. Just an extra N in there.

Jack: 34:25

Yeah, we got an extra N in there.

Tamara: 34:28

And then you said you have a podcast you want to talk about where the obviously we can know it or find it, but what it's called.

Jack: 34:35

Yeah, they can they can look up the Polarity Unscripted podcast. So that's all my adventures and kooky interviews, and it's a lot of fun. The first episode is with that nice woman who I had the intense experience with. And um shortly after I moved to Columbia and we were sitting in a park together having a candid conversation, and uh yeah, I still appreciate that that episode in that moment. So um, yep, that's it. Polarity unscripted and also jackboyannon.com forward slash heel.

Tamara: 35:10

Okay. All right, well, thank you. I was gonna say we could talk more, or we can have just like a final thoughts kind of thing, or unless you feel like we there's something we just started to cover but didn't finish earlier. Yeah.

Jack: 35:26

I hope everybody loves each other. I hope we get really good at connecting. I hope that we realize, oh yeah, everything's everything's fine and we're our fridge is full, and the only thing left to do after that is to get really aware of how we connect with each other and how we connect with ourselves. And come to a place of contentment where we can just sit in the light of um spirit or whatever you'd want to call it, because I think that's just about all we have to do here. So parting thoughts. Yeah, peace and love.

Tamara: 36:04

All right. All right, well, thank you very much. And if you love this episode, be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it as well. And of course, follow the show. And thank you again, Jack Bohanan with two N's.

Jack: 36:18

Thank you, thank you, Tamara.

Tamara: 36:20

Alrighty, thanks everyone. Bye.

Outro: 36:23

Frank's talk! Frank's talk! Sex and Dating. Educate