Tom is a healthy, handsome, 40-year-old engineer. He’s committed to his marriage and has three kids, plus a house in the suburbs. He seems the quintessential man-in-full, except that Tom hasn’t had sex in . . . “Well, let me see,” he says. “Oh, yeah, February 14, 1997. That’s the last time my wife and I made love. Before we were married, sex was frequent. Afterwards, it became once a week, then once a month, then it just stopped. I’ve tried to initiate it and been turned down so often, I’ve stopped trying.”

When Men’s Health magazine asked readers to tell them about their sex lives they got hundreds of responses from men who were having little sex with their partners — or none at all.

It turned out that Tom was just one of an estimated nine million British men stuck in no-sex or low-sex relationships. One study of 3,392 couples, published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family in August 1995, found that 20 per cent of married men (and women) under the age of 24 weren’t having sexual intercourse. This figure rises to 80 per cent for the married 75-and-older set.

Matt, a 32-year-old factory manager, has sex only every two weeks. “My wife and I had a night of passion last Saturday,” he says. “But then I’d just installed a dishwasher. I feel our sexual relationship has the puppy syndrome: I shit outside, I get rewarded.”

Some replies were heart-wrenching. “My wife and I rarely have sex,” says Nathan, 38, a history teacher. “She’s committed to me and the kids but she has no time for romance. So imagine my surprise when I came home from work on my birthday and find the kids were spending the night with relatives. After a romantic dinner, she suggested we go to bed early. As I slipped beneath the sheets, she handed me a card that read, ‘Your birthday gift is the Fantasy Channel’. With that she rolled over and said, ‘I’m tired. You can do whatever’. ”

Not every married man wants more sex. “The problem isn’t my wife, it’s me,” says Gregg, 35, a solicitor. I wake up every morning at half-past four, exercise, go to work, get home, play with the kids, then collapse into bed by half-past nine. Frankly, at this point in my life, I value rest more than sex.”

What’s going on here? There’s more sex in the media than ever. Any fetish you can imagine is a key-tap away on the internet. If the UK had a sex gauge, it would certainly be needling past full. Wouldn’t it? “Despite all the allusions to sex, there just isn’t as much of it going on as people think,” says Dr Daniel Stein, an American gynaecologist and author. “Studies indicate that 45 per cent of married couples have sex one to three times a month. Thirty-three per cent have sex zero to three times per year. And only 8 per cent have sex four or more times per week.”

“In my practice I’m seeing more celibate relationships,” says Dr Lana Holstein, an expert in sexuality and women’s health based in Arizona. “Typically, these are couples whose pace of life has increased so much that they’re on the edge of exhaustion. That leaves little time for loving.”

While it’s become a cliché for women to complain to their girlfriends about oversexed husbands, for a married man to admit to his mates that either he’s not getting any or he no longer desires it is still too painful. It’s almost easier to admit to a sexual dysfunction. Holding this kind of shame and resentment inside results in a “gridlocked relationship”, says Dr Stein. “The partners function as parents, as breadwinners, as housekeepers, but they’re more like brother and sister. Not only does the frequency of intercourse decline, so does the kissing and touching. Love wanes. A relationship needs nourishment to grow. And that nourishment is sex.”

Dr Stein says the worst thing you can do is nothing. Living like this will hurt you emotionally and physically and a lack of sex compromises health and even shortens life. A study of 918 men in Caerphilly, South Wales, undertaken by the University of Bristol, found that men between 45 and 59 who were having sex twice a week had a 50 per cent lower death rate than those having sex once a month or less.

Dr Stein believes that people who have sex at least once a week have stronger immune systems. “Sex is just as health-promoting as vitamins, exercise and a balanced diet,” he says.

Some couples can agree that sex is a low priority and still enjoy a happy relationship. They are in the minority, however. Most couples need regular sex not only to remain intimate but also to stay civil to one other. If you and your partner are at sexual odds, here’s a multi-step programme that will help you break the gridlock.

TEST YOUR RELATIONSHIP