The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 79 - The Surprising Truth About Sex: Africa Brooke

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

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

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. One of the things I've heard you talk about a lot is your your journey and your 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 um till today can you talk to me about that evolution and what you've learned about those topics that might benefit me yes absolutely so

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 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 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? It's a really interesting one because I'd say yes and no. So I say yes because below the age of maybe eight,

maybe I've got memories of that. And then above the age of 10, no. And I call my parents by their first names okay I really struggled with with intimacy because of the exact same reasons like right even the word best friend made me cringe until the age of still kind of makes me cringe now yeah like when people would say or call me their best friend this is part of me like Stephen me too like it's just a bit even boyfriend would make me like prison. Me too.

That's why when I found the word partner, I was like, okay, that feels much better. We stand next to each other. We don't. 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 had to look that in the eye. 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.

My relationship with sex has evolved a lot. Yeah. Over time. I think it was early in my early years influenced by porn. Yes, me too. So that's the way I went into the game. I just went in trying to be those male porn stars. Right.

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. Yes. What they think sex is in terms of this kind of very aggressive, often dominating, transactional encounter. Yeah. And then there's, again, I'm just talking freely.

I don't give a fuck what anyone thinks. Please do. Please. But I'm seeing a lot in my close friends, they're often in relationships, not all of them, where they're having 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 75 to 80 percent of my male friends are saying my partner doesn't want

to have sex she doesn't like having sex yeah and i was there at 1.2. My partner said that to me at 1.2. Yeah. 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 what I'd learned to be sex and what I was bringing as sex, this kind of aggressive, you know, whatever, was not the language that they spoke. Right. 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. Yes, yes. That's a lot. I'm just dumping that on you to see how it resonates.

No, no, no, no. That resonates so much. And 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 learned sex from porn at 10 years old, 10 years old. So by the time that I had sex for the first time, when I was 14, 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 learn that we should perform, that sex should be driven by

orgasm and ejaculation 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 realize when I got sober that every time that I was having sex, for example, I faked every single orgasm. It was all a before 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. That's what I actually meant. So what you just said is really important. And I realized that's when I found tantric sex, actually. Yeah, that's when I found tantric sex, around 2018. Because I realized that I had always felt like sex was being done to me, that I was not a part of it and that is how most women feel I felt like I needed to apologize

yeah because that's what that's what I came to learn yeah was that the the reason why 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 neanderthal monkey brain went uh like I was emasculated by it yeah it made me feel what is this something that I was I didn't do right of course ended up breaking up with this person got back with this person a year later when I was maybe a bit more mature I apologized 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 yes 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 her view of sex was this person comes and takes from you treats you like this 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. Right. 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. Yes. She didn't want that anymore. Yes. 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 she went from the place of like I don't have sex anymore to absolutely loving to have sex yeah I didn't think it was possible I thought if they don't like sex dump them yeah you know I'm gonna go find someone right that will let me take 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 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 starting a sexual wellness company called Cherry Revolution over time. 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. 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 realize

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, that you can experience orgasm without penetration. Just so many different ways of articulating that experience of sex and it's just that an experience and that changed so much for me it's such a um 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 to cause someone yeah orgasmic pleasure and yeah um 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 yes just proposing the idea that what if you both just speak there's just say there was 10 languages what if you're just speaking the wrong language? You know what I mean? And what approach would you then take? You'd probably try and learn the language. And also communicate to them what language you speak

and see how you can be bilingual, I guess. You know what, it reminds me of, are you familiar with love languages and that whole thing? I realized that a lot of people 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.'m like really am I gonna ask but you get used to it yeah and if they run off good 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 um 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 um 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 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 it's it comes back in so many respects what we were talking about earlier this kind of binary approach to life they either fit or they don't uh-huh there's no space for conversation and nuance 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. 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. 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. That's a very powerful term. My most successful relationship, my current relationship, we are completely different. Really? We don't believe the same things. We don't believe the same, we don't have the same fundamental beliefs't have the same fundamental beliefs yeah the reason why it works is because of one very simple thing communication and a very healthy high respect communication where everything isn't an attempt

to win it's an attempt to like genuinely understand to move forward yeah and i think you can have two people that are that went 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. I agree. And I guess empathy is part of respectful communication. Yeah.