Moment 79 - The Surprising Truth About Sex: Africa Brooke

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. In this moment, Africa Brooke brings her unique and groundbreaking perspective on how to establish sexual chemistry. Africa is courageous for not promising quick fixes or shortcuts. Rather, she is open and frank that sex is different for everyone. Her focus is unlocking the mental barriers that stop you connecting to other people in a physical way. Want to know what real love, affection, and intimacy looks like? Let Africa explain… Listen to the full episode here -https://g2ul0.app.link/m3QAsHUn6tb Africa: https://africabrooke.com https://www.instagram.com/africabrooke/?hl=en Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things I've heard you talk about a lot is your your journey and your

• 0:09Steven Bartlett?

  evolving relationship with sex and sexuality. And how that changed from when you were very young through the period when you were drinking a lot. Till today, can you talk to me about that evolution and what you've learned about those topics? That might benefit me.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. So

• 0:32Speaker 01

  I'm going to sort of keep referring to my sobriety in that period of my life because it was so transformative. And it revealed so much to me, so much that I could have never imagined at the time. So something that also happened when I got sober, I think this was about a year into my sobriety. I realized just how much sexual shame I was holding, so much of it. And I initially sort of wanted to fix it, wanted to do something about it. What are some surface level things that I can do? What can I read? What can I sort of dive into? How can I deal with it from where I am now?

• 1:12Speaker 01

  As a 25 year old, but I quickly realized that I actually had to trace it back to see where it even comes from. And I realized, just like so many things, it did come from my childhood, being raised in a Christian home. I learned, again, not directly, more so indirectly, that being a sexual being was not something that was of God. It was not something that was supposed to be a part of who I am. Pleasure was never discussed. Sex was never discussed. Even intimacy in general, I never saw my parents hold hands. I never saw my parents hold hands. I never saw them kiss. I never saw them hug. I never saw any sort of affection.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  But I knew that they loved each other. I knew that they cared about each other, but affection and intimacy, I just never saw that, not for a moment. Did you see that growing up?

• 2:09Steven Bartlett?

  It's a really interesting one because I'd say, I'd say yes and no. So I say yes, because below the age of maybe eight, maybe I could got memories of that. And then above the age of 10, um, no. And I call my parents by their first names.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:26Steven Bartlett?

  I've really struggled with, with intimacy because of the exact same reasons.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:31Steven Bartlett?

  Even the word best friend made me cringe until the age of, it still kind of makes me cringe now. Yeah.

• 2:37Steven Bartlett?

  Like when people would say it or call me their best friend, this is part of me going, oh.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Stephen, me too.

• 2:42Steven Bartlett?

  Like it's just a bit, even boyfriend would make me like, ah, prison.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Me too. That's why when I found the word partner, I was like, okay. That feels, that feels much better.

• 2:54Steven Bartlett?

  We stand next to each other. We don't.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. So when I sort of wanted to really understand where a lot of the sexual shame was stemming from, or just more so even outside of sex, intimacy, intimacy, feeling very disconnected to other people when it came to intimacy, but also from myself. I realized that I could only be expressive as a sexual being if I was drunk or if I was high. If I was in that place where of course my inhibitions are low, but I had no insecurities. I didn't have to feel like I'm doing something wrong. I didn't have to feel like my pleasure was wrong. But then when I got sober, all of those things came to the surface and then I, I had to look that in the eye.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  So that also became something that I started sharing over time as well as sort of sharing my journey with sobriety. I then started sharing the things that were revealed as a byproduct of me getting sober. And sexual shame was a huge one, was a big part of that.

• 3:56Steven Bartlett?

  My relationship with sex has evolved a lot.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:58Steven Bartlett?

  Over, over time. I think it was early, in my early years influenced by porn.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Yes, me too.

• 4:03Steven Bartlett?

  So that's the way I went into the game. I just went in trying to be those, those male porn stars, you know? And I think over time, and I think there's this wider issue in our society, specifically, I've got to be honest with men.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:17Steven Bartlett?

  What they think that, what they think sex is in terms of this kind of very aggressive, often dominating, transactional encounter.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:31Steven Bartlett?

  And then there's, again, I'm just, I'm just talking freely. I don't give a fuck what anyone.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Please do. Please.

• 4:36Steven Bartlett?

  But I'm seeing a lot in my, in my close friends, they're all in, they're often in relationships, not all of them, where they're having

• 4:45Steven Bartlett?

  problems with their sexual relationship with their partner. They're basically saying things to me, and I'd say, this is crazy, I'd say seventy five to eighty percent of my male friends are saying, my partner doesn't want to have sex. She doesn't like having sex.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:59Steven Bartlett?

  And I was there at one point too. My partner said that to me at one point too.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:03Steven Bartlett?

  And I took it on face value. I thought, they don't like sex. What I came to learn is that wasn't true. But that what, what I'd learnt to be sex and what I was bringing as sex, this kind of aggressive, you know, whatever, was not

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:20Steven Bartlett?

  the language that they spoke.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:22Steven Bartlett?

  And I feel like I'm surrounded by men that need to start seeing sex as a language. Because then you can ask yourself, well, actually, she's speaking Spanish and I'm speaking English. That's why. It's not she doesn't like English, she just doesn't, she speaks a different language.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 5:36Steven Bartlett?

  That's a lot. I'm just dumping that on you to see how it resonates.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  No, that resonates so much. And I'm, I'm really glad that you said this because I think you're speaking something that is on so many people's minds, or something that they've just never really put language to. And a big part of my awakening, if you will, and really addressing that sexual shame is because I also learnt sex from porn at ten years old, ten years old. So by the time that I had sex for the first time when I was fourteen, it was very much like a porn performance, to put it very simply. And I speak to so many people, men and women, about this very specific thing. A lot of us learnt that we should perform, that sex should be driven by orgasm and ejaculation,

• 6:21Speaker 01

  and this sort of production, if you will, which is not actually. Accurate for most people when it comes to what really actually feels pleasurable, especially for women. So I started to realise when I got sober that every time that I was having sex, for example, I faked every single orgasm. It was all a perform. I didn't know much about my body because I'd learned from porn. And because the men that I was with had also learned from porn, we were just in a performance and no one's actually talking about it, right? So in times when I was in relationships and I made myself think, I don't want to have sex. I don't want to have sex anymore. It actually was not that I didn't want to have this type of pornified sex.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  That's what I actually meant. So what you just said is really important. And I realised, that's when I found tantric sex, actually. Yeah, that's when I found tantric sex. Around twenty eighteen, because I realised that I had always felt like sex was being done to me.

• 7:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  That I was not a part of it. And that is how most women feel.

• 7:25Steven Bartlett?

  I I felt like I needed to apologise on behalf of men. Yeah, because that's what that's what I came to learn.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:31Steven Bartlett?

  Was that the the reason why the the person I was with had turned around to me and said, I don't like having sex is, and when we got talking about it, after I acted like, I mean, let me be clear, the first time she said that, I did not understand. My little chinchon, neanderthal monkey brain went, uh, uh, uh, like I was emasculated by it. It made me feel, is this something that I was, I didn't do.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Ego steps in, right?

• 7:57Steven Bartlett?

  Ended up breaking up with this person, got back with this person a year later. When I was maybe a bit more mature, I apologised and I said, I want to have a conversation. And I also said to her that I'm going to be here regardless of whether we have sex or not.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:09Steven Bartlett?

  And then she could, she had a safe enough space to start talking to me about it. And what I discovered is she'd been with, she'd had three previous boyfriends over the course of seven years. She, her view of sex was this person comes and takes from you, treats you like this object. And she was with him for five years, treats you like an object, takes what they want from you. And then he was actually going and cheating on her as well.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:32Steven Bartlett?

  So not only was he taking, he was then like hurting her and that cycle just repeated. Her relationship with what sex is was really, really toxic. She didn't like that.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:41Steven Bartlett?

  She didn't want that anymore.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:43Steven Bartlett?

  And that's what she and me probably referred to as this word sex. So it was kind of like learning a new language of sex and what it actually is. That then she went from the place of like, I don't want to have sex anymore. To absolutely loving to have sex.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:58Steven Bartlett?

  I didn't think it was possible. I thought if they don't like sex, dump them.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:01Steven Bartlett?

  You know what I mean? And go find someone that will.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:04Steven Bartlett?

  That will let me take.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yes. And you know what? You you've articulated that so beautifully in terms of sex being a language. And it's going to look different for every single person, because something that I realized is that I could tell when I was with a man sexually. I could tell if they were sort of, if it was like a script, almost like a play by play. Like, this is exactly the method. We do this, we do that, switch into this, switch into that. It it wasn't sort of flowing and very intuitive as to what's actually needed in that moment, which reminded me of porn. And I would also realize, actually, and this is something that I've spoken about so much, because I ended up um starting a sexual wellness company called Cherry Revolution over time.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  And I realized that even some of the positions I would get in were very much like porn, because certain positions in porn are like that, because the camera is there. Not because it's comfortable, because that's the shot for the viewer to be able to see it. So when I started to see that I'm starting to replicate this in my most intimate, private moments, but we're both doing it. I made myself believe that I didn't enjoy sex. So then drinking and drugs and everything that came with it. I felt like those were the moments that I could be fully expressive without needing to perform, which is very interesting, because you would think it would be the opposite, that I would then perform more. But I felt as if I could actually speak my mind.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  If I didn't enjoy something, can we try this? Can I do this instead? Or I just want to give, or I just want to receive. Can we be slower? And then when I was sober, I felt like I couldn't say those things, because if I say to you as my partner, I might be emasculating you, I might be embarrassing you, you might think something is wrong. So I would just perform and you're performing as well. And then it just causes a huge disconnect. So tantric sex was the first thing that I came across that made me. Realise and really articulated that sex is actually not a specific destination. Did you know that you can actually enjoy sex without ejaculation? That you can have a full body orgasm, that you can be very slow. That foreplay can be the main thing that you do.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  That you can experience orgasm without penetration. Just so many different ways of articulating that experience of sex. And it's just that in experience. And that changed so much for me.

• 11:31Steven Bartlett?

  It's such a sort of a narrative violation for so many people who've spent their whole life watching porn. And then recreating it, this idea that you can have an orgasm from touch. That you can use energy to cause someone orgasmic pleasure.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I just, that's, it's a really important topic that I think people need to talk about a lot more. And I think just, just saying to someone that's listening to this, that might be in a relationship where they're not, they're in a sexless relationship.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:58Steven Bartlett?

  Just proposing the idea that what if you both just speak, just say there was 10 languages. What if you're just speaking the wrong language?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:06Steven Bartlett?

  You know what I mean? And what approach would you then take? You're probably trying to learn the language.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 12:11Steven Bartlett?

  And also communicate to them what language you speak and see, and see how you can be bilingual, I guess.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know what? It, it reminds me of, are you familiar with love languages and that, that whole thing?

• 12:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  I realised that a lot of people

• 12:28Speaker 01

  expect someone to give in the way that they like to receive, you know? So no one really says, okay, how do you like to receive love? How do you like to give love? And the moment that I started asking those questions, even though I, believe me, I fucking cringed in the beginning. I'm like, really, am I gonna? But you get used to it.

• 12:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, and if they run off, good.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, Stephen, it's been a game changer to just ask the person that I'm dating or my current partner to be like, how do you like to be loved? How do you like to receive love? And how do you like to give it? Because just those simple questions can change so much. And then you can use the same with sex. What do you like and what do you not like? What have you changed your mind about? What do you like to do now and again? Or maybe not so much sometimes? How much time do you need? How does your arousal actually work? And I know that some people might not know how to answer these questions for themselves. So it's actually very good to start asking yourself those questions before speaking about it with someone else. These are questions that you can just start to ask yourself before introducing them to someone else.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  But they can, they can change so much because I think we get into relationships and make so many assumptions based on our individual experiences and our worldview. And we expect the person we're with to reflect the exact same thing back to us. But we don't, we don't ask questions.

• 13:55Steven Bartlett?

  It's, it's comes back in many respects to what we were talking about earlier. This kind of binary approach to life, they either fit or they don't. There's no space for conversation and nuance and, and, and I guess mutual development together. Like towards the same, this idea that you have to actually build and develop a relationship towards a place of satisfaction as opposed to finding your perfect soulmate or perfect fit.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:19Steven Bartlett?

  That I'm going to find someone that likes to have sex like I do, that likes to talk like I do, that likes the things I do, as opposed to this kind of molding towards being more cohesive together.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  I love that term mutual development. And it makes me think actually that this is a term that can apply even outside, maybe even especially outside of romantic relationships. This idea that people don't have to be perfect, that they don't have to exist in the way that I want the world to be or in how I expect them to be. Maybe we can actually mutually develop a different perspective together because we're two different beings coming together.

• 14:55Steven Bartlett?

  Cause my, my most successful relationship, my current relationship, we are completely different.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Really?

• 15:00Steven Bartlett?

  We don't believe the same things. We don't believe the same, we don't have the same fundamental beliefs.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:07Steven Bartlett?

  The reason why it works is because of one very simple thing. Communication and a very healthy, high respect communication.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:15Steven Bartlett?

  Where everything isn't an attempt to win. It's an attempt to like genuinely understand to move forward.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:20Steven Bartlett?

  And I think you can have two people that are, that want very, very different things, whether it's in sex or in business or their beliefs about religion and spirituality, be bound together as long as they have respectful communication.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 15:31Steven Bartlett?

  You know what I mean? And I guess empathy is part of respectful communication.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.