I can’t believe what my husband expects me to do in front of our son.

How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Jessica and Rich here. It’s anonymous!

Dear How to Do It,

My husband and I had a baby six months ago, and within the past two months, we have gotten back to regular sex. This is great … except for one thing.

The thing is, we live in a one-bedroom apartment. Our lease is up in several months, and we will be moving into something more spacious. In the meantime, we’ve been keeping our baby’s crib in our bedroom. I’ve been insisting on moving the baby outside the room while we have sex, but my husband complains about this. He thinks that because the baby is so young, we should just go at it with him in the room. I’m worried he will somehow have unconscious memories of us screwing and it will warp him. Moving the crib whenever we want some alone time is becoming a sticking point. Am I right to be concerned?

—Don’t Want an Audience

Dear Don’t Want an Audience,

To the most immediate question you pose, the answer is unfortunately murky. Developmental psychologist Andrew Bremner co-wrote a letter to the editor on the subject that was published earlier this year in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences. “It is really hard to establish when babies become conscious. This is mostly because infants can’t report their experiences and, as most parents will know, can be rather uncooperative particularly when it comes to experimental tasks,” Bremner said.

Even still, it seems as if the accepted wisdom has been that if the kid is younger than 6 months, you’re fine. Your child is just at the age when this might start to matter, but no one is quite sure. I think more important than all that is your experience. If having your kid in the room makes you uncomfortable, how good will the sex actually be? And what is so wrong with moving the baby outside the room when you have sex? Like, why not do that? Is your husband pushing back merely out of principle, or does he have a good reason, like he doesn’t want the ghosts in your living room to mess with your baby when he isn’t present? If his reasoning is merely counter to yours in essence, you win the debate easily. Get that kid out of there and enjoy yourselves.

Have a nagging (or totally inconsequential) question about sex? It’s fun to see your words in this column! Send it in now.

Dear How to Do It,

My long-term boyfriend and I enjoy a group sex event once or twice a month with our munch group, and one of the activities we very much enjoy is a certain game where you get three or four ladies and blindfold them. An equal number of guys take turns doing cunnilingus on the women, and after everyone has had a turn with everyone, you try to guess which men ate you out in what order.

Both my boyfriend and I are enthusiastic participants, but there is one problem. He’s got a full beard. And he’s the only guy in the group with facial hair, so it makes his turn pretty obvious. I think he should shave his beard off for a change, but he flatly refuses. And it ruins the game! Do I have any recourse here?

—Party Games

Dear Party Games,

I agree with you in spirit: When electing to play a game, one elects to impose rules on oneself and those participating in the hopes of overcoming them and winning. A game without rules is chaos. That said, triumphing over opponents isn’t the only thing at stake here, so you can see why your boyfriend is reluctant to alter his appearance, right? This game takes up a fraction of your cumulative daily lives; a beard is full time. Also, it seems that this “game” is a game like drinking games are games—winning is nice but not exactly the objective. In drinking games, the real point is to get drunk; in your swingers’ game, it’s to receive and give head. Everyone has already won before a champ can be named.

So, I think your boyfriend is approaching this kind of fun, goofy thing with the right amount of seriousness, which is to say not much. It’s at least not serious enough for him to shave his beard. Even if you don’t agree with his priorities, you can see how he has arrived at them, right? I’m wondering how the rest of the group feels about the dead giveaway of your husband’s facial hair. Is anyone else as bothered as you are? Has anyone said anything? If it were my group, I wouldn’t let anyone so identifiable play … unless he was really good at giving head. Your husband’s technique may be weakening your case. And yet that still makes this scenario a win-win for everyone.

Dear How to Do It,

I’m a 60-year-old gay man with a 70-year-old husband. We met during the AIDS epidemic, and monogamy seemed like a good idea at the time. However, lately I find I’m jealous of guys who, thanks to PrEP, now get to have unprotected sex with multiple partners. To make things worse, my husband is no longer interested in anal play, so our sex life has become just foreplay and oral sex.

I planned to unilaterally tell him I no longer wanted monogamy, but a week before that difficult conversation, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and wasn’t fully informed by the medical establishment how sexually destructive treatment is. (I did 25 sessions of radiation and am halfway through six months of chemical castration.) To put it bluntly, I have ED, I can’t have an orgasm, my penis has shrunk, and my libido is in the toilet. I think doctors don’t mention this stuff because if they did, fewer guys would choose treatment. I certainly wouldn’t have.

I went to see a sex therapist, but the cheery “You can have just as much fun doing other things, and sex and intimacy don’t always have to involve erection and orgasm” talk just pissed me off. My husband has REALLY been trying, but I’m finding that the body contact and foreplay with no erection or orgasm only makes me angry and sad rather than giving me any kind of satisfaction. My husband tells me he is still enjoying himself, but I don’t believe him. If this illness really is the end of my sexuality, how do I come to terms with it? I don’t want to live 10 or 20 more years if I’m going to be resentful and sad all the time.

—Between a Rock and a Not-Hard Place

Dear Between a Rock and a Not-Hard Place,

I feel for you. Cancer is incredibly difficult without sexual side effects, and it really sucks that yours came just as you were embarking on a reawakening. But I think the most important thing you can do right now is to hold on to hope. Chemical castration isn’t permanent. You’re halfway through your treatment, which means your libido is in the gutter right now. Your issues are common, and there are many paths forward once you complete the treatment. This is not necessarily the end for you, so don’t treat it as if it is.

Indeed, your options for post-op therapies will be vast. For erectile dysfunction, they include PDE5 inhibitors like tadalafil and sildenafil. Johns Hopkins says that about 75 percent of men who have undergone nerve-sparing prostatectomy/radiation have reported success in achieving erections using these pills. You also have the option of injectable medication, pumps, and even penile implants. In terms of recovering libido, testosterone replacement therapy is increasingly common post–prostate cancer.

Things look bleak at this moment because you’re in the thick of it. There is hope. In the interim between now and the completion of your treatment, find a support group. You’re not alone, and experiencing community with people who have gone through what you’re going through may be uplifting and foster even more of the hope that you sorely need.

Dear How to Do It,

I feel like such a glassbowl for even feeling this, but … since our third child’s birth a few months ago, I have not felt physically attracted to my wife. With our first two, I never lost it, even during the crazy sleep-deprivation days of newbornhood. But this time, I’m ashamed to admit, the pregnancy weight hasn’t been shed nearly as quickly/easily, and try as I might, I’m just not feeling it. Which hadn’t been an issue thus far—we’ve both been too tired and too never-alone—but a few days ago, she asked me to start initiating. I feel lousy about being this superficial, but I don’t know how to get the lust back to go along with the love.

—Shallow Hal

Dear Shallow Hal,

Well, at least you feel like an asshole—I mean, glassbowl. That’s self-awareness doing its job, and it’s something a lot of people lack. I’m not trying to be harsh here, but you and I know that you have to go easy on your wife. She just had a baby. It’s been a few months. You can’t expect weight to just melt off, and even if it doesn’t … she just had a baby that you helped make! That she should experience ill effects coming from you after going through that for both of you seems really shitty.

But! Our bodies often operate beyond reason, and your lack of sexual inspiration is real and has physiological consequences. Have you considered that you’re just not ready to get back to sex? This curbed attraction is not necessarily permanent—you’re in a transitional mode as a couple. Could you be experiencing postnatal depression? It happens in fathers! And maybe your fatigue is contributing. Our culture tends to promote the notion that men are always ready for sex and that when they aren’t but their partner is, they have somehow failed to measure up. It’s nonsense. Check in and listen to yourself. Trust your body. If you don’t feel like initiating, you don’t have to, but you should assume that your wife will.

Your issue here is common, and I think you can start slowly. Try reintroducing intimacy—not necessarily by jumping to intercourse but by cuddling, touching, and kissing. You can’t ask your wife to lose weight without risking offending her, but you can promote exercise and healthy eating by suggesting that you do these things together (take up the cooking, for example). If all else fails and you’re still not feeling it, you of course have the option of counseling, but hopefully some time will be what you need to put things back in place.

More How to Do It

I’m hoping you can supply me with some guidance, readings, and maybe some comfort. Tonight, my fiancé told me about his main kink. We have been together for six years and are getting married in less than a month. It’s been a huge surprise and is sending me for a loop.