What to Know
Tim Gunn is best known for his time on Project Runway, but during a surprisingly personal new podcast interview, he made a confession that many people didn’t see coming. According to the reality TV star himself, Tim has been celibate for 43 years after a bad breakup in the end of his 20s really poisoned him against ever wanting to share that kind of intimacy with another person again.
Tim made the surprising reveal on Chelsea Handler’s podcast.
As he explained on the comedian’s Dear Chelsea podcast, back in 1982, a relationship that Tim had been in for nearly a decade came to a sudden end, leaving him blindsided. It seemed like an ordinary night for him, until his partner said, “I have no patience for you any longer. I want you to leave.”
Though they lived together, Tim still had his own apartment, so he left.
“I drove to my apartment on Rock Creek Parkway, and I had to pull of because I was hyperventilating. I was beside myself with self flagellation and self pity, and it was awful,” Tim said.
Everything changed when his relationship came to an end.
At the time of their breakup, Tim’s former partner also let him know that he had been unfaithful and was “sleeping with just about everything that walked by,” which was terrifying to hear — not just emotionally, but because of how strong the AIDS epidemic was during that time.
“The self pity then turned to completely unbridled anger because I though he may have given me a death sentence. Of course, and I was tested every six months for ten years for HIV and thankfully I had a clean slate,” he said.
Ultimately, he made the decision to become “someone who lives alone.”
The stress of the situation pushed Tim to make the conscious decision to stay celibate from then on.
“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 said, adding that now, he couldn’t imagine his life “any other way.”
All that matters is that this lifestyle works for Tim — he is the one living it, of course. But it’s heartbreaking to hear what pushed him to make this decision in the first place.
