'We seem like the perfect couple...

then, I found something hidden in his desk drawer'

Send your dilemma in to “What Would Jo Say?” via a direct message or email me at: jo@writeyourmind.co.uk.

AS A PSYCHODYNAMIC THERAPIST with 26 years’ experience working with adults and young people, there’s little I’ve not encountered in the counselling room. I’m so grateful to the courageous person who sent in this week’s dilemma.

Question:
My husband and I have been married for nine years and from the outside, we seem like the perfect couple—successful, devoted, and inseparable. But no one sees what happens behind closed doors.

For almost a year, my husband has been distant in ways that only someone in love would notice. We haven’t been intimate in months… at first, I thought he was having an affair. Then, I found something hidden in his desk drawer: a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication… unopened.

He’s never mentioned it, and doesn’t know I know. He’s clearly struggling with something, but why won’t he talk to me? Is it shame, or fear? Or is this perhaps about something deeper that I can’t begin to understand? I’m scared about how to move forward but it’s eating me up. How do you reach someone who’s shutting you out while suffering in silence?

Answer:
your letter reveals a real sensitivity, not just to what’s occurring beneath the surface of your relationship—but to what’s being left unspoken. And that is, perhaps, where the heart of the issue lies.

Sexual difficulties like your husband’s can be profoundly distressing, not only because of their physical nature, but because of the anxieties they stir up: feelings of inadequacy, shame, vulnerability, and fear of rejection. From a therapeutic perspective, these kinds of reactions can often be echoes of earlier, internal struggles.

That unopened prescription speaks volumes. It suggests your husband may be caught in a quiet battle—perhaps between a conscious desire to resolve the issue and a deeper, unconscious fear of confronting what the dysfunction might mean about his identity, his aging, or his sense of masculinity/virility. Avoidance, in this context, becomes a defence—a way to protect himself from feelings he may not be ready to face, let alone articulate.

Your role in this—watching, wondering, feeling the pain—is equally important. Often, in intimate relationships, one partner holds tension the other cannot bear. In your empathising, you may be carrying the emotional weight of what’s unspoken, even trying to preserve the peace by not pressing too hard. But what’s most striking is your loyalty. You're still here, still hoping; that, too, is powerful.

Rather than confronting him with the prescription, try instead to create an emotional space where vulnerability is safe. You might say, “I’ve noticed a change in our closeness, and I miss it. I’m here—not to fix or pressure, but to try to understand...” You may be surprised by what opens up when safety replaces silence.

Another consideration would be speaking with a couples therapist—someone who can hold this space for both of you and help explore what the symptom might be saying about the unspoken dynamics in your relationship.

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