Tim Gunn recalls the heartbreak that led to 43 years of celibacy
Project Runway star Tim Gunn has explained why he has spent 43 years celibate. (Getty)
Former Project Runway mentor Tim Gunn is opening up about his commitment to celibacy, which has lasted for 43 years.
Speaking to comedian Chelsea Handler on her podcast Dear Chelsea, the American TV personality opened up about a “very serious” relationship he had during his twenties while living in Washington D.C. in the ‘80s.
The 72-year-old explained that while he loved his former partner “deeply”, the relationship ended dramatically and Gunn discovered that the partner had been unfaithful.
Gunn explained that the relationship and its end coincided with the advent of the AIDS epidemic, which killed tens of thousands of LGBTQ+ people in the US alone throughout the ‘80s. At the time, misconceptions about HIV/AIDS were rife, and treatments for the sexually transmitted disease were unavailable for much of the decade.
Gunn was left full of “unbridled anger” at the prospect that he had been given a “death sentence” by the man he loved the most.
“I’ve been in New York for 42 years. Forty three years [I’ve been celibate],” he told Handler.
“I had a very serious nine-year relationship in Washington D.C, and I loved this person deeply and would have done anything for him. And I still remember the night that it all ended,” he shared.
The star said that the couple were in bed watching US sitcom MAS*H when his partner told him: “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,” the How I Met Your Mother actor recalled.
“I had to pull off because I was hyperventilating. 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,” he said.
On the night Tim Gunn was asked to leave, his partner also told him that he had “been sleeping with just about everything that walked by” while Gunn had remained “loyal and faithful”.
“He was the only person I’d ever been with,” Gunn continued. “And this is the advent of AIDS. It’s 1982. The self pity then turned to completely unbridled anger because I thought he may have given me a death sentence.”
The first recognised case of HIV in the US was recorded in June 1981 by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gunn said that continued to get tested for HIV “every six months for ten years” but never tested positive. However, the experience left an indelible mark on him, and he never pursued a sexual connection with anyone again.
“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 admitted. “And I have to say, being celibate and being someone who lives alone was a bit of an adjustment. But now I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Gunn recounted the story in a 2010 interview with People. At the time, he described himself as being “sort of asexual“.
“In my twenties, I was madly in love with the same man for almost a decade. It was fabulous. [Then] one night he told me he’d been sleeping around. I could hardly breathe from grief, humiliation and despair,” he said.
“Much of my boyfriend’s ‘I’m over this’ was about sex. I’ve always been kind of asexual. That breakup was a cold shower to last a lifetime.”
Tim Gunn is best known as being a mentor on Project Runway from its 2004 inception until 2017, when it ended on Bravo. The fashion reality show was rebooted on Bravo in 2019 without Gunn, before ending in 2023. It was then rebooted by Freeform in 2025. RuPaul’s Drag Race star Utica was a runner-up on the most recent season, which was won by Veejay Floresca, the first trans person to win the long-running series.
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