Two terms will be explained in this section: "neediness" and "male neediness".

Neediness 

In TBBT, needy behavior is frequently exhibited by the main characters. Howard is a typical example portrayed as a creepy horny character in the beginning seasons who is seeking every opportunity to have a romantic relationship or sex. He will resort to risky, offensive, and flirtatious comments and borderline harassment to achieve this purpose. Another two male characters, Leonard and Raj, share some of these behaviors when seeking romantic relationships or sex, and they also display self-doubt, over-attachment, a lack of confidence, and a fear of abandonment. However, a more comprehensive understanding and definition of "neediness" is needed. 

There are some past researches examining personality traits in TBBT, such as Bednarek's research (2012). She defined the concept of "nerdiness" from the audience's perspective, by referring to dictionaries, google images, online corpus ("Corpus of Contemporary American English’', COCA), related websites, and scholarly papers, which not only renders a relatively non-biased, objective view of nerdiness in TBBT, but also takes audience's views into consideration. Building on her approach of generating definitions representative of mainstream conception, we also consulted the aforementioned resources to produce our definition of "neediness".

According to dictionary definitions, neediness (as defined by the search term "needy") can be defined as an emotionally unhealthy state of low confidence, often requiring excessive amounts of love and attention to support themselves (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.; Oxford Learners Dictionaries, n.d). Furthermore, a Google image search of the term shows images of a person latching onto another person's leg who is about to leave. This indicates needy people do not cope well with rejection, frequently grovel and devalue themselves into a lower position, and demonstrate a significant lack of independence in a relationship.

Besides an unhealthy state, "neediness" can be seen as a morbid state, especially in some academic papers written by mental health professionals. According to Dunkley et al. (2006), neediness is a form of maladaptive dependency, and generally speaking, a person with it may have an undifferentiated attachment to others and suffer from a fear of being abandoned. There is a category that can fit our project better, which is love dependency. It can be interpreted as “the need to obtain and maintain proximal relationships with others” (Pincus & Wilson, 2001, p. 242, cited in Dunkley et al., 2006). Coincidentally, the search for “neediness” on Wikipedia is directed to another item called “narcissistic supply”. It is defined as “a pathological or excessive need for attention or admiration from codependents” ("Narcissistic Supply", 2023). 

Next, the “search” function of COCA was used, with the whole of the corpus included within the search. Collocations show that there are two ways “needy” is generally interpreted, one as “in a state of need, usually in terms of money or basic life requirements”, and the other as“in need of attention, affection, or love”. Collocation examples with a high frequency of the latter definition are “needy women”, "needy men", and “needy nerds”. Last but not least, two relationship websites recommended by Google when searing for the term “neediness in love” offer explanations of why people appear needy when dating. Both suggest that dependent behaviors are a sign of filling a void or in fear of a void opening in one’s life (Gilette, 2022; Lloyd, 2022). 

In conclusion, we define "needy"  or "neediness" as: 

1. Clingy, dependent;

2. Excessive fixation on proximal relationships that are built on attention, adoration, affection, and love with others;

3. Exhibiting a lack of self-love, lack of confidence, insecurity, indecision, and people-pleasing tendencies due to a void in certain aspects of their lives;

4. Inability to handle rejection healthily and often resorts to groveling and begging.

Male neediness

As the scope of neediness was still rather wide, and male and female characters exhibit neediness in varying ways as the series progressed due to power dynamics and plot development, we decided to only focus on male neediness in TBBT, that is, the neediness exhibited mostly by Leonard, Howard, and Raj (since Sheldon was not preoccupied with romance or flirting even after he began dating). 

In addition to the normal clingy behaviors, we have also identified the key relationship between "sex" (and other words related to this, including but not limited to "coitus" and "getting laid") and male neediness in TBBT. This is because most of the time, the underlying drive to have sex with a woman for male characters in TBBT is not only to resolve physical needs (i.e. sex drive), but to prove themselves attractive and "wanted" enough to have a partner.