Am I being too Needy or is this not right?

[AmINeedy]

Hi
I was married for 20 years and divorced 2 years ago and 6 months later met a single man with no children but 3 ex wives and many more ex partners.
He's a lovely man,so funny, always on the go and generally can't sit still, he loves his sport , works hard and away a lot but when home he has to go to the pub every Wednesday,Friday,Sunday as routine and more recently another 2 nights. Some weeks he'll be there 5 nights a week and as I work nights this could mean not seeing each other and no time for us to go out doing other things together as it's pub night or there's a fight or football match in so he goes to the pub to watch it rather than home.
We've been together 18 months and I truly love the bones of this man but I'm finding his way of life difficult to handle, it's restricting our relationship, were not really bonding and to me it's pushing me away instead of getting us closer over time.
Then he plays golf which means when the weather is brighter his weekends are taken up too leaving us zero hours together as those nights Sat and Sun he'll go to the pub after til after midnight.
He said I'm too needy ?
If he's been away for two weeks with work when he gets home that night he'll be with his friends down his local pub not with me though he'll pop over for an hour to say hi then gone.
There's one other issue , no sex in any shape or form , he can't he has erectile dysfunction , we tried when we first met but he felt to embarrassed and brushed it under the carpet and won't discuss it, if I do he gies angry . He went as far as getting Viagra but won't use them.
Put all this together I feel really unwanted but I feel I'm being selfish and after being married so long to a man who visited match.com behind my back I'm worried I'm the problem here?
Just reread my post and I see I do look pathetic .
This man wants us to live together but how can I live in a sexless nit even touching relationship where he'll be at the pub from 8 pm til closing 3-5 times a week ?
I'm really lost ??

Your "friend" is one of those people who cannot be alone. He needs constant social stimulation. This is a problem if you are a 40/50/60 year old man, because there are not many "arrangements" that suit his needs. A Morecambe and Wise type arrangement would be ideal. Therefore you are a "filler", for the gaps in his social calendar. His failure to even attempt to address what may be a fairly basic sexual problem, demonstrates that he see's your relationship as a social one. You are effectively one of his pals, no different than his golf partner.

Ps/ I have a couple of friends who are like this.

He's from South Wales and informs me the way he is , is how he grew up and it's normal, he points out the other blokes who go to the oub all day and every day who are married, my reply is they've either been married so long their wives dint care or their wives are glad .
I'd shared my concerns with his niece , she thought I was being hard on him, she came down to stay with him fir a few months over summer as shed finished uni, she went to the pub with him every time he went, where I couldn't go. We felt out badly over thus but I was led to believe I was being jealous and childish by him and the 19 year old niece , hence I don't speak to her now , x

As a kid, if I would use the excuse 'everyone else does it', I would get a pretty withering response from DM who would say she didn't give a hoot about 'everyone else'.... Being Welsh does not give someone carte blanche to be a selfish old dinosaur....

If he thinks you are jealous and childish, don't stick around to be insulted. Gather up what's left of your self esteem and return him to the land of his fathers....

Beautifully put Cog

His idea of needy is having needs that are opposing to his. Men like this are charming, fun and good company but terrible partners - hence the trail of ex wives and partners. You know that if you settle down with him you will end up the same way - he just wants to please himself really.
The occasional ability to meet your needs doesn't mean he isn't selfish, it just means that sometimes your needs coincide with some wish of his.

This relationship sounds like the very definition of "more trouble than it's worth".

Is this maybe all a bit too much like hard work for what you are getting out of it? And are you entirely sure he doesn't have other women like you around the country when he's working away? Not affairs but women filling that gap in his life so he can talk about 'her indoors' when he's at the pub.

I used to work in pubs and would see the guys all sitting round, that was their social life, some would come in for one then go home to spend tine with family using the pub as a break from work to home life, others would just sit there all night. That was their home. if you don't want to or can't sit in the pub all night...then you are probably not v compatatible and you could just move on and have it as a 18 month memory. He's no a bad chap just not your partner.

Well the niece is very young, and her life revolves around socialising and drinking and being out, as is appropriate for her stage in life. Her pov is not to be taken seriously as regards the complexities of your thoughts, as it is the opinion of someone who is not yet mature enough to even begin to understand what you need from this relationship. Of course she thinks he's fine - she 19!!

It might be worth continuing this if you were getting some good sex out of it - but it isn't even a booty call!

If you move in with him (please don't btw) what happens to your 16 year old?

Let him go. Move on. Don't move in with him.

Thank you, I've always maintained we are just friends and nothing else to him, it's true to, he sees me when he has spare time and he does seem to always be doing something , when he phones we are akways interrupted , there's akwaysxa more important phone all or person to talk to instead of ending the call properly
He is set in his ways , routines at the pub Chrustmas eve, day, Boxing Day, Easter , birthdays, valentines day, never celebrated they are an inconvenience .
I had a chat with him last night, I was in tears telling him I can't live with his lifestyle and that I know it's his life but I can't fit in with it, it's the reason I can't get back to sleep from 1am onwards, I don't think about anything just have a gutted feeling that won't let me settle .
Got a text just now , saying how much he loves me and how much better his life is with me.
By the way, he's still in touch with 3 exes one if which he phones up with his latest news and meets for a coffee on occasions his job takes him to her hospital . I trust him sexually because I know it's not possible and it's ok to be friends with exes but I feel envy because he'd go out of his way .
It's true his vibrant over zealous personality is charming and attracts people, he loves being the clown and has to go to pubs to chat to his mates, he's going away later on in the year with some .
He thrives on conversation , helping people too .
I must admit when he didn't mind me going to the pub, his friends would ask why I was with him or didn't I mind him being there so often,or how dud input up with him chatting and ignoring me or women throwing there arms round him while I was there.
I stopped going after he said one Friday night, I went 2 Fridays every month for nearly a year, that it was embarrassing for him , that other wives didn't go and watch their men play darts . I never went again after that, to me that night was my chance to be one of the blokes, get to know the locals in my own right to and build up a social life for us .

You were cramping his style at the pub!
Bin him off, you deserve better.

"Got a text just now , saying how much he loves me and how much better his life is with me."

Even that is all about him. 'I'm all right Jack'... attitude is very consistent with everything else you've written. His life is better with you in it..... yours is miserable. But yours doesn't matter.

Hope you find the strength to stop letting him make you miserable.

You've got to know when to give up and stop flogging a dead horse.

All your views are my inner thought, it's helping me to see my instincts are right and my values are right.
I did ask him last night if he knew what a" normal " relationship was, he said " Obviously Not"
He has a heart of gold, can't see what he's doing isn't the way to a normal relationship, I should replace Normal with average, sorry.
He said a while ago was my neediness is due to being insecure? Lol
Last night after I said I find his lifestyle difficult to live with , he said it's because I'm scared he'll see someone else, that doesn't scare me xx

Well there you have it. He has told and showed you who he is, and where his priorities lie...and that is to please himself, by himself. When you're not even welcome along for a drink now and then...well fucking hell. The more you reveal about him, the more I think he's done a total job on you.

He doesn't love you, and him typing the words will not make it so. He's saying what he thinks he ought, to keep you in place as his as-and-when filler, as another poster rightly described it. Your affection is convenient for him and no, he won't want to lose it because it serves him very nicely.
Problem is, it doesn't serve you at all.

Time to pick up your self esteem and dignity and kick this selfish, chancing, charming wsanker to the curb, like the other women before you saw fit to do.

So if you stay with him you will win the following glittering lifestyle.

Wake up next to him, his breath stinks as he was drinking last night (like every night) and didn't bother brushing his teeth before he came to bed. As he turns over you get a whiff of swampy arse. Looks like he didn't bother to shower either. You grimace as you get out of bed ready to face another day. He wakes up and barks for the remote control. Sky sports lights up the 72 inch HD TV which dominates the bedroom. You didn't bother arguing when he brought it home as it's not as if anything else goes on in the bedroom after all.

Onto the daily drudge, cleaning, laundry, preparing an evening meal that will only be criticised.

You read an article about a play and you decide you'd love to see it. You bring it up but he grunts "NOPE. I'm from the valleys and real men don't go the theatre, bach, we go to the pub, mun, and play darts!" (I found this bit particularly funny coming from South Wales as I do. What an arse)

Off to the pub he goes. You have a potter about, relieved that he's gone. You watch a bit of something other than Sky Sports, have a bath and get into bed. Rinse and repeat.

Keep fighting for this fabulous prize though! It's so worth it.

He really doesn't have a heart of gold. He may be the life and soul and everyone's best mate, he may talk a good game or make a lunch or mention love ..... but he is motivated by 'self'. He wants everyone to like him but only so long as he's doing his own thing. Provided it's on his terms he doesn't much care how they really feel about his treatment.

A normal person goes through life and thinks about how their actions impact on others. A selfish person goes through life and is only concerned about how others impact on them.

When someone tells your who they are LISTEN.

When people value the people around them they want them to know they are valued and the company is enjoyed.

Needy would be getting weird about him wanting to go out once a week. Begging him to stay in at least once a week is him telling you he does not like you enough to spend time with you.

He sounds like my dad. A very charming and handsome man with a long string of ex's, a strict routine to his life that included lots of time in the pub and always with at least one woman on the go.

I've come to the conclusion that his womanising was more an ego thing than anything to do with love. He was way too catastrophically self-centred to be capable of or interested in a proper committed relationship. But he liked having women at his beck and call provided he could then put them back in their boxes when he had something more interesting to do. It was only ever about him.

SandyVagina,,,,,,,so near the mark..this is a typical night, I did live with him for a few months but this is what I couldn't stand.
,,,,,after being woken up at 2am on a Sunday morning by chatty man, he hiccups, laughs, farts,laughs and sticks out his bum and roars with laughter as he pops another, he goes into the kitchen and listens to Sky sports, full blast because he's deaf, he lives in a bungalow so I hear him cooking too.
3 ish he stumbles into bed.
I wake to his snoring then he wakes up at 9, he's got work to do he says as I try to hug him,. Sky sports goes on while he has a coffee, then goes for a shower but plays with his iPad and phone for an hour before the shower goes on, I wait crossing my legs by then,,,he emerges then says he's got loads of work to do, do I fancy coming back for Sunday lunch.
We watch " John Wayne" a dog named Dog followed by highlights of Liverpool lol
We sit on the couch til 8 then a lift to the pub , then it would start all over again but I go home, I get texts telling me local gossip if any at all, then it starts all over again.
Yep he won't watch anything other than films from70,s music too, thinks my modern Bo Ho look weird too, won't watch or hear anything modern lol it's all rubbish lol
Sorry he does bring that up about living in the Valleys, men were real men lol his work is down there now too lol,,, I did take him to watch PRIDE, he dragged his feet ,he enjoyed it so much he told everyone about it lol xx

HE IS A COCK!

Make a list of the good points in all this. You should be able to do this easily as you love him so for example I would like to be in a relationship where my list would look like this:

He's kind and thoughtful
I know he has my best interests at heart

Etc etc.

Oh God that's so funny sandy/needy!

But seriously, you will look back at this in year's to come and be so upset with yourself for putting up with so much crap.

How does he get back from the pub? I think I know the answer.