Moment 34 - The Key To Finding True Love: Ali Abdaal

The segment starts when the host returns to something Ali Abdaal mentioned earlier in the conversation, while they were discussing knowing you're enough: he hadn't had much luck with relationships. Abdaal calls it "a real problem" and puts it down to narratives he has bought into subconsciously. The first is a self-image left over from age 12, when he was getting slightly bullied at school and was valued mainly for his exam results.

Not being valuable as a human being beyond the fact that I was generating a stars in exams

He says there is "another side" and, after the host asks what it is, he hesitates before naming it: masculinity and what it means to be a man. His evidence is loose and secondhand. He points to what one might "hypothetically read" in "wiki how articles on how to get girls" and "the vast literature on the topic". From these he takes the idea that women are attracted to men who lead and are "alpha". He names no specific study or author, so the claim stands for a popular belief he has absorbed, not a tested finding.