My husband’s medication has killed his libido … what can I do?

Dear Bess: My husband’s medication has killed his libido. He’s embarrassed, I’m lonely, and neither of us knows what to do?

I received your letter on a Tuesday morning, sat with a cup of tea going cold beside me, and read it three times. Not because it was complicated – but because I recognised every word of it.

You are not the first person to write to me about this. You will not be the last. And I want to start there, because the first thing loneliness does is convince you that you are the only one experiencing it. You are not.

Your husband started blood pressure medication eighteen months ago. Since then, his interest in sex has dropped to almost nothing. He is mortified. He has made one or two attempts to raise it with you and then retreated, embarrassed, back into himself. You have tried to tell him it doesn’t matter – and a small part of you worries that this makes it worse, because it does matter, and he probably knows that you are being kind. So now you are both living around the subject, carefully, like furniture nobody wants to move.

Here is the first thing I want you to know: what is happening to your husband is extremely common, genuinely not his fault, and – and this is the important part – often reversible.

The medication question is worth asking out loud

Several of the most commonly prescribed medications for men over 60 affect sexual function. Blood pressure medications – particularly beta-blockers – are among the most frequent culprits. So are antidepressants, prostate medications and certain diabetes treatments. The mechanism varies, but the result is often the same: reduced desire, difficulty with arousal, or both. Many men find this so humiliating that they don’t mention it to their GP. Their partners often don’t mention it either, assuming it is simply age.

It is not simply age. And the conversation with the GP is worth having, directly, with the medication named. In many cases, a dosage adjustment or a switch to a different class of medication can make a meaningful difference. Your husband may need you to go to that appointment with him – not because he can’t manage it alone, but because two people advocating together are harder to brush past than one embarrassed man on his own.

What intimacy looks like when it changes form

I also want to say something about the broader picture, because this is not only a medical problem. It is a relational one. The physical distance that has opened up between you carries its own weight – not just the absence of sex, but the absence of touch, of the small physical reassurances that signal to both of you that you are still in this together.

There is a kind of loneliness that happens inside a marriage that is harder to name than the loneliness of being alone. You are in the same house, the same bed, the same life – and yet something has quietly withdrawn. That grief is real and it deserves to be acknowledged.

Have you told him that you miss him? Not the sex, necessarily – him. His closeness. The particular warmth of being wanted by someone who has known you for decades. Sometimes that conversation, said plainly and without blame, opens a door that embarrassment had quietly closed.

He is mortified. You are lonely. Neither of you is wrong. And neither of you has to keep managing this in separate silence.

A practical suggestion

Make the GP appointment. Go together if he’ll let you. Frame it not as a problem with him but as a medication side effect that deserves the same attention as any other – because that is exactly what it is. And in the meantime, find a way to say the thing you have been not-saying. Not the clinical version. The real one.

“I miss you. I want to find a way back to each other. I’m not angry. I’m just here.”

That is enough to start.

Got a question for Bess? Write to her at [email protected]

IMPORTANT LEGAL INFO This article is of a general nature and FYI only, because it doesn’t take into account your personal health requirements or existing medical conditions. That means it’s not personalised health advice and shouldn’t be relied upon as if it is. Before making a health-related decision, you should work out if the info is appropriate for your situation and get professional medical advice.