Hearing loss can affect many aspects of your daily life. Your pastimes, your professional life, and even your love life can be affected by hearing loss, for example. For couples who are coping with hearing loss, communication can become strained. Animosity can develop from the increased stress and more frequent quarrels. If ignored, in other words, hearing loss can have a substantially negative impact on your relationship.
So, how does hearing loss effect relationships? In part, these tribulations happen because the parties aren’t aware of the hearing loss. After all, hearing loss is typically a slow-moving and hard to notice condition. Communication may be tense because of hearing loss and you and your partner may not even be aware it’s the root of the problem. Practical solutions might be difficult to find as both partners feel increasingly alienated.
Frequently, a diagnosis of hearing loss coupled with helpful strategies from a hearing specialist can help couples start communicating again, and improve their relationships.
Can hearing loss affect relationships?
When hearing loss is in the early phases, it’s difficult to detect. Couples can have considerable misunderstandings because of this. As a result, there are some common issues that develop:
- Couples frequently confuse hearing loss for “selective hearing”: Selective hearing is when someone easily hears something like “let’s go get some ice cream”, but somehow misses something like “let’s do some spring cleaning”. In some circumstances, selective hearing is a conscious behavior, in other cases, it’s quite unintentional. Spouses will frequently start to miss certain words or phrases or these words and phrases will sound jumbled when one of them has hearing loss. This can sometimes lead to tension and resentment because one spouse mistakes this for “selective hearing”.
- Arguments: Arguments are rather common in almost all relationships. But arguments will be even more aggravating when one or both partners have hearing loss. Arguments can happen more often too. For others, an increase in arguments could be a consequence of changes in behavior (for instance, boosting the volume on the television to painful levels).
- Feeling ignored: When someone doesn’t respond to what you say, you’re likely to feel ignored. When one of the partners has hearing loss but is oblivious of it, this can frequently occur. Feeling like your partner isn’t paying attention to you is not good for long-term relationship health.
- Intimacy may suffer: Communication in a relationship is often the foundation of intimacy. This can cause a rift to build up between the partners. As a result, hearing loss may introduce friction throughout the relationship, causing more frustration and tension.
These issues will often start before anyone is diagnosed with hearing loss. Feelings of bitterness may be worse when parties don’t know hearing loss is the root problem (or when the partner with hearing loss insists on disregarding their symptoms).
Living with a person who is dealing with loss of hearing
How do you live with a person who has hearing loss when hearing loss can cause so much conflict? For couples who are willing to formulate new communication techniques, this usually isn’t an issue. Here are some of those strategies:
- Encourage your partner to come in for a hearing exam: Your partner’s hearing loss can be controlled with our help. Many areas of tension will fade away and communication will be more effective when hearing loss is well controlled. Additionally, treating hearing loss is a safety issue: hearing loss can effect your ability to hear the telephone, smoke detectors and fire alarms, and the doorbell. It may also be hard to hear oncoming traffic. Your partner can get assistance controlling any of these potential issues by scheduling an appointment with us.
- When you repeat what you said, try making use of different words: When your partner doesn’t hear what you said, you will usually try repeating yourself. But try changing the words you use rather than using the same words. Hearing loss can affect some frequencies of speech more than others, which means some words might be harder to understand (while others are easier). Your message can be strengthened by changing the words you use.
- Help your partner get used to their hearing aids: Perhaps you could do things like taking over the grocery shopping or other tasks that cause your partner stress. You can also ask your partner’s hearing specialist if there are ways you can help them get accustomed to their hearing aids.
- Patience: This is particularly relevant when you recognize that your partner is coping with hearing loss. You might have to repeat yourself more frequently or vary the volume of your voice. You may also have to speak more slowly. The effectiveness of your communication can be dramatically improved by exercising this type of patience.
- As much as you can, try to look right into the face of the individual you’re speaking with: Communicating face-to-face can furnish a wealth of visual cues for someone with hearing loss. You will be providing your partner with body language and facial cues. And with increased eye contact it will be easier to maintain concentration. By giving your partner more visual information to process they will have an easier time understanding what you mean.
After you get diagnosed, what happens next?
A hearing test is a fairly simple, non-invasive experience. In most circumstances, those who are tested will do little more than wear specialized headphones and raise a hand when they hear a sound. But a hearing loss diagnosis can be an important step to more successfully managing symptoms and relationships.
Encouraging your partner to get in touch with us can help ensure that hearing loss doesn’t undermine your happiness or your partnership.
