Tim Gunn Explains the Heartbreaking Reason Behind His 43-Year Celibacy
Tim Gunn Explains the Heartbreaking Reason Behind His 43-Year Celibacy
Rachel RaposasWed, February 25, 2026 at 5:43 PM UTC
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Tim Gunn.Credit: Amy Sussman/Getty -
Tim Gunn opened up about the painful reason behind his celibacy
A gutting breakup and the hurtful circumstances surrounding it completely altered how Gunn approached intimacy, he said
"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," Gunn said
Tim Gunn is shedding light on the painful reason behind his celibacy.
The former Project Runway mentor, 72, opened up on the Feb. 19 episode of the Dear Chelsea podcast about his choice to remain celibate for more than four decades. Gunn made the deeply personal decision as a result of a particularly fraught breakup of a meaningful relationship, he said.
In 1982, Gunn was living in Washington, D.C., and had spent nine years in a relationship with a man he loved incredibly. Gunn "would have done anything for him," he admitted. Then one night, it was all over.
"I have no patience for you any longer," Gunn recalled his lover telling him. "I want you to leave."
Gunn got in his car and drove back to his apartment, stopping on the side of the road to try to ease his hyperventilation. Gutted, Gunn's pain was amplified by the fact that he still had to work with this person and see him every day.
Tim Gunn.Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty
The hurt of the breakup was just one part of Gunn's anguish, though. During that fateful conversation, his partner had confessed to cheating on Gunn — just as the AIDS crisis had begun picking up speed.
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"One of the things he told me that night was that he'd been sleeping with just about everything that walked by," Gunn said. "And I had been loyal and faithful to him. He was the only person I'd ever been with."
Gunn added, "The self pity then turned to completely unbridled anger because I thought he may have given me a death sentence."
Out of extreme caution, Gunn got tested regularly for HIV every six months for 10 years, and luckily the results always came back negative. But the emotional scar his former partner had left on him never budged and completely altered how Gunn navigated love and intimacy.
"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," Gunn said.
Tim Gunn.Credit: James Devaney/Getty
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Gunn later left Washington, D.C., for a teaching job at N.Y.'s Parsons School of Design — a position he said he rejected years earlier because he was "very happy" with his partner in D.C. The physical distance from his former lover and the city in which his heart was broken, coupled with years and years for the pain to dull, were the best cure for his broken heart, Gunn said.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
