Tim Gunn Reveals Heartbreaking Reason for 43 Years of Celibacy: ‘It Would Just Take the Desire Away’

Tim Gunn is opening up about what led him to abstain from sex for the past few decades of his life.

On the Thursday, February 19, episode of Chelsea Handler‘s Dear Chelsea podcast, the Project Runway star, 72, recounted how he got his heart broken by someone he loved in the ’80s.

“I had a very serious nine-year relationship in Washington, DC, and I loved this person deeply and would have done anything for him,” the TV personality explained. “And I still remember the night that it all ended. We were in bed watching M*A*S*H, and he said to me, ‘I have no patience for you any longer. I want you to leave.'”

“I had my own apartment, but I had been living with him for years, and I left. I drove to my apartment on Rock Creek Parkway, and I had to pull off because I was hyperventilating,” Gunn recalled. “I was beside myself with self-flagellation and self-pity, and it was awful. And this is someone I worked with, so it wasn’t as though I just would never see him again.”

Additionally, the fashion expert said that his partner revealed he was unfaithful during their relationship, which instilled fear in him that he could have contracted HIV/AIDS.

“One of the things that he told me that night was that he’d been sleeping with just about everything that walked by, and I had been loyal and faithful to him,” Gunn shared. “He was the only person I’d ever been with.”

“And this is the advent of AIDS, it’s 1982. So the self-pity then turned to completely unbridled anger because I thought he might have given me a death sentence,” he continued. “And I was tested every six months for ten years for HIV, and thankfully, I had a clean slate.”

Gunn admitted that it was hard to shake these emotions afterward.

“Whenever I was even tempted to engage in something that could become serious with someone, all this would come back like Niagara Falls, and it would just take the desire away,” he confessed.

“And I have to say, being celibate and being someone who lives alone was a bit of an adjustment,” he added. “But now I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

While the relationship was a negative experience at the time, Gunn told Handler, “things happen for a reason,” noting, “had this relationship not fallen apart, I would never have moved to New York.”