Jim Parsons Put on the Spot by Ellen DeGeneres About Whether He'll Marry Longtime Partner: "I'm a Loser for the Cause"

The Big Bang Theory star has been with boyfriend Todd Spiewak for 11 years

By Natalie Finn May 23, 2014 1:26 AMTags
Jim Parsons, EllenEllen

Kinda like Sheldon Cooper, Jim Parsons isn't in a rush to make any changes to his love life.

But that's just because things are going so great just as they are!

In an interview that aired Thursday on Ellen, the Big Bang Theory star confirmed that he has now been with partner Todd Spiewak for 11 years—but when pressed by his host, he didn't have a yes or no answer to the question of whether they now planned to get married.

"Are you going to get married?" Ellen DeGeneres asked.

"I don't know," the 41-year-old actor mused. "That's a hard one. I mean, you get so used to your life as it is that...

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"But it gets better when you get married, it really does—don't think that it doesn't," DeGeneres, who married Portia de Rossi in 2008, insisted.

"I don't not think that it doesn't," Parsons said as DeGeneres continued on, noting that "11 years is enough to know" whether you want to get married or not.

"He's watching," Parsons reminded her, looking toward the camera. "I mean, is this...OK. Yeah," he stuttered.

"So..." DeGeneres pressed again, the exchange turning even more humorous.

"I'm not saying he's been discouraging it, I'm not," the actor said, to which his host replied, "It sounds like he's discouraging it."

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"No, he's not discouraging it," the famously private actor, who just opened up about his personal life for the first time last year, continued. "I feel like I haven't been enthusiastic enough about it and now I feel like I'm a loser for the cause."

"That's why I brought you here, to make you feel like that," DeGeneres assured him. (Watch the clip to fully enjoy Parsons getting grilled.)

But the star of the upcoming HBO adaptation of Larry Kramer's play, The Normal Heart, about the early days of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, certainly deserves plenty of credit when it comes to "the cause."

"I've never considered myself an activist," Parsons said in October on the red carpet before he and Spiewak were honored with the Inspiration Award from LGBT group GLESN. "I've never considered my relationship with Todd to be an act of activism. Rather simply, it's an act of love, coffee in the morning, going to work, washing the clothes, taking the dogs [out]—a regular life, boring love."

Sounds as if those two say their I-dos every day.