Competing sex drives can be tough to manage; Dr Charmaine Saunders offers advice on how to get the most from your love life…

It’s important to have clear boundaries in this area because no-one should ever do anything in bed that he/she doesn’t want to. However, partners who love each other want to share and give pleasure, hence the conflict.

If one partner wants sex every night and the other only once a week, this will cause problems. The simplest solution is compromise; for example, make love two to three times a week to satisfy both parties.

This issue is not just about physical needs, but emotional needs as well. The unsatisfied partner begins to resent the other and feel rejected, while the unable-to-satisfy partner feels pressured and inadequate.

It can spiral out of control if left unattended. Another important tool which can make things better is open communication. If couples can speak about their needs bravely and honestly, they can work out positive techniques in a loving way. In silence, anger grows and festers.

Loss of libido can be caused by triggers such as work stress, fatigue, childbirth, business and unresolved family issues. However, there isn’t a problem unless you make it one.

Men and women have different levels of libido, and it’s a myth that men want sex more than women. It can work either way. You shouldn’t feel rejected if your partner doesn’t want as much sex as you because sex and love are not the same thing.

The worst thing you can do is pressure your partner, as it will turn them off even more. Compromise and communication are two of the most vital elements in a relationship’s success.

Unconcerned with being typecast, Goldie giggled her way through her feature film debut, playing a dancer in 1968′s The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band, and as a scatterbrain mistress in Cactus Flower (1969), which earned her both a Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

With her career on the rise, Goldie starred opposite Peter Sellers in 1970 farce There’s a Girl in My Soup, holding her own against the comedy legend. She then showed she wasn’t just a fun babe with a rockin’ bod by impressing critics with her mature performance in drama Butterflies Are Free (1972), in which she portrays a young woman who helps her blind neighbour/lover deal with his past and controlling mother.

It was official: Goldie Hawn was versatile. Also in 1972, the beauty surprised fans yet again by teaming up with country music stars Dolly Parton and Buck Owens to record the album Goldie, which features covers of Parton’s ‘My Blue Tears’ and Joni Mitchell’s ‘Carey’.

Private Benjamin was also released in 1980, and proved to be the film that Goldie needed to launch her back onto the A-list. Hawn is fantastic as a snobby socialite turned army chick, and her entertaining performance earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Hawn also made her debut as an executive producer on Private Benjamin, and she has since produced an additional seven movies.

Then along came lucky bugger Kurt Russell. Even though the two had worked together previously on The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band, they fell in love on the set of 1984′s Swing Shift, and went on to star in the 1987 leadweight comedy, Overboard.

Proof that Goldie could still do scorching (now well into her 40s) came via 1990 action comedy Bird on a Wire, in a scene where a gust of wind lifts Hawn’s skirt to reveal brief briefs and a healthy amount of arse to an appreciative Mel Gibson, who quips: “When did you start wearing underwear?”

No digital trickery was required when Goldie played a woman with a perfect figure following an immortality treatment in 1992 comedy Death Becomes Her, before letting it all hang out as an ageing groupie in 2002′s The Banger Sisters. Passing the sexy on to daughter Kate Hudson. So much for the ‘dumb blonde’.

William Shatner’s James T. Kirk was, at heart, an ordinary guy who did extraordinary things—such as pleasuring multiple green-skinned Orion slave girls while karate-chopping knobby-headed Klingon warriors with his other hand.

Sure, he was the only Starfleet cadet to ever successfully conquer the impossible training scenario known as the Kobayashi Maru exercise, but he cheated, because that’s what smart-arsed everyday blokes with pot bellies and cheeky grins do.

Christopher Pine’s younger James T. Kirk was less an ordinary guy than a Gen Y gym rat and part-time model, who had just enough bad-boy street cred to make him attractive to the space ladies without barring him from Starfleet Academy on a character test.

Anywhere Shatner’s Kirk went, he arrived a few moments after the bright yellow curve of his tummy. Pine’s starship captain, on the other hand, was able to wear a skin-tight skivvy without irony or embarrassment.

His physique recalls the type of sculpted douchebags you find at www.hotchickswithdouchebags.com—where guys who spend too long with fake tan are so inordinately proud of their massively ripped abs that they give them absurd names such as ‘The Situation’.

I’m sure that, like all Hollywood stars, Christopher Pine is a lovely bloke. It’s just that, like most modern male actors, once he gets that shirt off, he looks like a bunch of coconuts and half bricks jammed into a tight rubber bag. When the hell did this happen? It used to be that when big-name Hollywood actors took off their shirts…well, mostly they didn’t. And if they did, they looked like normal guys—guys who’d taken some care to look after themselves, but still normal guys.

The only muscle definition with which they were familiar came out of a dictionary, and some of them were so close in their physical build to you and I that they looked less like a bag of shit than they did a bag of shit that had spent months on the couch inhaling pizzas and playing video games.

Gentlemen, I do not see this as a positive development. I don’t imagine for a second that many of us are going to develop immediate eating disorders or exercise addictions just because we’ve seen Brad Pitt get his gear off in Troy; that’s not how the male mind works.

I fear, however, it’s exactly how the female mind works. It cannot be a good thing for the ladies to be constantly disappointed by the gap between what our culture imagines to be a perfect, or even an average, male form and the saggy, hairy, kinda blotchy and lumpy reality. Not good for them, and most assuredly not good for us.

It’s not a two-way street, of course. Men have long divided the world into the hotties of their imagination, and actual women. Probably because of all the training we get in as teens with magazines such as this.

A psychology has evolved within the male gender to help us cope with this disconnect. The idea of the unattainable: Megan Fox, for example; smokin’ hot, but unobtainable. Sports Illustrated swimsuit models? Smokin’ hot, but unobtainable. Penthouse Pets…you get the idea.

But when have the females of the species ever considered anything as unobtainable? They see, they want, they get. Whether it be shoes, bags, naughty treats from the dessert tray, more damn shoes, extra closet space for the extra shoes, another bag, and a few more shoes.

A woman who can own more pairs of shoes than there are days to wear them between now and the combustion of the universe is not going to be put off by any man who tells her to forget about finding a set of rock-hard, washboard abs anywhere other than up on the big screen. She will see. She will want. And she will kick our fat arses until she gets. God help us all.

Needing to form a good, well-balanced squad, I went on the hunt for a young internet gun, and all roads led to a quietly spoken guy from Adelaide who was making more money than most CEOs playing poker online.

I found it odd that shy and retiring Jonathan Karamalikis was better known as “Monster Dong” on the web, but he was certainly making his mark.

Last year, Karamalikis joined a select group of Australian pros when he was sponsored by online gaming giant Full Tilt Poker, and he immediately repaid their faith in him by winning the PokerStars Asian Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Grand Final in Sydney in December.

Not only did the victory catapult  Jonathan into the top echelon of Australian poker, it also saw him take home just under half a million dollars in prize money. I had a chat with the Dong at the recent Crown Aussie Millions tournament in Melbourne…

Okay, Jonathan, why “Monster Dong”?

Haha! It’s always the first question. Obviously, I had a lack of confidence when I invented the name. I made “Monster Dong” my online handle to make myself feel better about my adolescent issues, and to try and convince everyone that I actually have a big dong.

When did you start playing poker?

My mate taught me how to play when I was 16. That same night, I created an account at a play-money website and played endlessly. It took me about six months to learn the basics, and from there I’ve never looked back.

What are the most obvious differences between playing online and playing live tournament poker?

Being able to see who you’re playing against live is a huge advantage. I can usually work out what kind of people [my opponents] are in the first 20 minutes. Online, there’s a lot more re-raising and aggressive play. Live play is more focused on post-flop action.

Outside of poker, what else do you enjoy doing?

I spend most of my time hanging out with my mates, watching basketball and going to the gym, when I have the time to get into a routine. I also love travelling and seeing new places. I spend four to five months of the year on the road.

Where to next, Mr Dong?

I want to do Europe sometime this year, go play some tournaments on the EPT [European Poker Tour] circuit and perhaps visit London for World Series Europe. And obviously I’ll be going to Las Vegas for the World Series—that’s a “can’t miss”; however, I might just go for the Main Event this year because my mates and I never actually play poker when we’re there…

Do you see poker as a career option, or just a hobby?

I consider poker to be both a career and a hobby. I see it as a competitive sport because you’re always looking to improve. I’m more than happy to keep doing this for now.