Two years ago, my wife and I made it our new year’s resolution to have sex every day. The reason was simple. Utterly worn out by the arrival of our first child, we had pretty much stopped having sex. I was 33, she was 30, and our erotic life needed not so much a jump-start as electrotherapy.

At first, we tried to laugh off the decline in our love-making. On the rare occasions we did it, we would say something like, “We must do this more often,” and giggle. But as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, broken only by the occasional, desultory shag, it became clear this was no laughing matter.

The absence of sex is a powerful yet subtle foe. It quietly corrodes the most important parts of a relationship — trust, intimacy, passion, respect — and that least analysed of all attributes, fanciability. If left untreated, the lack of sex can even destroy love. I am convinced many people split up because they forget to make love to each other, and love — along with the feelgood chemical, dopamine, that sex generates — dries up.

A sexless relationship quickly becomes a vicious circle. The less we did it, the worse we got at it. As the time between our spells of passion lengthened, so those same spells of passion shortened, until sex was lasting just a few minutes on a good night once in a blue moon — hardly encouraging, as you might imagine.

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It’s one of the injustices of the sexes that no matter how poor the sex, we men always get to have an orgasm. And once we have had it, our inner caveman’s work is done and all we want to do is roll over and go to sleep. The answer to this problem, of course, is stunningly simple — bring your wife or girlfriend to orgasm before you shag. But that takes time. And effort.

The fact that you are not having sex is also hard for a man to talk about, because there’s so much pride bound up in it. So, when my wife whispered in my ear on New Year’s Eve, 2006, that our resolution should be to have sex every day, my initial reaction was one of abject terror. That’s not the way men are supposed to feel about sex. Real men are supposed to be ready to go at it whenever, wherever, member joyfully in hand. My first thought was: “How can I get out of this one?”

My wife was ambivalent as well. She recalls: “The first week or so, it was a chore. We worked hard to find the time to fit it in between the laundry and EastEnders. I dreaded it in the way I dread going back to the gym every January.”

I will always remember that first night back in the saddle. The sex was over almost before it had begun. My wife said: “Don’t worry, you’ll get better at it. We just need to practise.” This was, word for word, what the first girl I slept with said to me when I was 18 — but my wife was right. We had sex the next night, and the next, for the whole of January, February and March. As the weeks turned into months, I learnt to control myself again, while my wife, with the confidence that comes from practice, began to reach ecstasy more quickly. It took a long time at first, though. Hours and hours. We started at opposite ends of the time/orgasm continuum and worked our way to the centre.

It wasn’t just an improved physical experience — so much else changed, too. We became better at communicating. Our minds became more attuned to the state of our bodies — I started running, she started Pilates. And then she fell pregnant. At the end of 2008, 15 months after our second child was born, we both noticed the “must do this more often” jokes creeping back in. We had exactly the same problems: a new baby, exhaustion . . . So, you know what we did? We resolved to have sex every day, all over again. And it’s going great.

Practice makes perfect

Want to rediscover passion? Here’s how. The good news is it involves you having more sex. The bad news is it’s with your spouse. Yes, the latest advice is that forcing yourself to have sex even when you don’t feel like it could save your relationship.Isn’t this horribly retrogressive — in the same vein as taking off your apron and making sure you’re wearing lipstick when your husband comes home from work? Not according to the experts.

The Australian sex therapist Bettina Arndt, for one, is a strong advocate of “just doing it”, whether you’re “in the mood” or not. “Desire is a decision. Without sex, a chasm can develop that erodes a couple’s bond,” she says.