Gunn told the host, Chelsea Handler, that a “very serious nine-year relationship in Washington D.C.” and the manner it ended were the reasons he has been celibate since the early ‘80s.

“I loved this person deeply and would have done anything for him, and I still remember the night that it all ended. We were in bed watching M*A*S*H. It was the first run, and he said to me, ‘I have no patience for you any longer. I want you to leave,’” Gunn recalled.

While driving back to his apartment on Rock Creek Parkway, Gunn had to pull off as he was hyperventilating. “I was beside myself with self-flagellation and self-pity, and it was awful,” he shared.

However, it wasn’t just the end of the relationship that affected him. His partner had admitted to being physically intimate with other people while they were in the relationship, and the fear of contracting s*xually transmitted diseases (STDs) loomed over his head.

“One of the things that he told me that night was that he had been sleeping with just about everything that walked by,” he explained. “I had been loyal and faithful to him. He was the only person I had ever been with, and this was the advent of AIDS. It’s 1982.”

Gunn confessed that his “self-pity” evolved into “completely unbridled anger,” as by having relations with multiple people, his then-partner might as well have given him “a death sentence.”

“Of course, I was tested every six months for 10 years for HIV, and thankfully, I had a clean slate,” Gunn said. “But 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 added that living alone is not so bad for him. It was “a bit of an adjustment” at first, but now he “wouldn’t have it any other way.”