Hearing loss can impact many aspects of your day-to-day life. Neglected hearing loss, for example, can affect your professional life, your favorite hobbies, and even your relationships. For couples who are coping with hearing loss, communication can become strained. This can cause increased tension, more disputes, and even the development of animosity. In other words, left unchecked, hearing loss can negatively affect your relationship in substantial ways.
So how are relationships affected by hearing loss? These challenges occur, in part, because individuals are usually oblivious that they even have hearing loss. After all, hearing loss is usually a slow-moving and hard to detect condition. Communication may be tense because of hearing loss and you and your partner might not even be aware it’s the root of the problem. This can lead to both partners feeling alienated and can make it difficult to find workable solutions.
Relationships can be helped and communication can start to be repaired when hearing loss is diagnosed and couples get reliable solutions from us.
Can hearing loss affect relationships?
When hearing loss is in the early phases, it’s difficult to detect. This can result in substantial misunderstandings between couples. Consequently, there are a few common problems that develop:
- Feeling ignored: When somebody doesn’t respond to what you say, you’re likely to feel disregarded. This can often happen when one partner is suffering from hearing loss and isn’t aware of it. The long-term health of your relationship can be significantly put in jeopardy if you feel like you’re being disregarded.
- Couples often mistake hearing loss for “selective hearing”: Selective hearing is when somebody effortlessly hears something like “let’s go get some ice cream”, but somehow misses something like “let’s do some spring cleaning”. In some cases, selective hearing is totally unintentional, and in others, it can be a conscious choice. 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 result in tension and resentment because one spouse confuses this for “selective hearing”.
- Arguments: Arguments are fairly common in pretty much all relationships. But when hearing loss is present, those arguments can become even more aggravating. For some couples, arguments will break out more often because of an increase in misunderstandings. For others, an increase in arguments could be a result of changes in behavior (for example, increasing the volume on the television to painful volumes).
- Intimacy may suffer: Communication in a relationship is often the foundation of intimacy. And when that communication becomes harder, all parties might feel more separated from one another. As a result, hearing loss may introduce friction throughout the relationship, ultimately causing more frustration and tension.
In many cases, this friction begins to happen before any actual diagnosis of hearing loss. Feelings of resentment may be worse when parties don’t know hearing loss is the core issue (or when the partner with hearing loss insists on dismissing their symptoms).
Advice for living with someone who is dealing with hearing loss
If hearing loss can lead to so much conflict in a relationship, how can you live with someone who has hearing loss? For couples who are willing to develop new communication strategies, this usually isn’t a problem. Here are a few of those strategies:
- Patience: When you recognize that your partner has hearing loss, patience is especially important. You might have to change the way you speak, like raising your volume for instance. It might also be necessary to talk in a slower cadence. The effectiveness of your communication can be significantly improved by exercising this type of patience.
- Utilize different words when you repeat yourself: Typically, you will try to repeat what you said when your partner doesn’t hear you. 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 certain words may be more difficult to understand (while others are easier). Changing your word choice can help strengthen your message.
- Help your partner get used to their hearing aids: Perhaps you could do things like taking over the grocery shopping or other chores that cause your partner stress. There also may be ways you can help your partner get used to their hearing aids and we can assist you with that.
- Try to talk face-to-face as often as possible: Communicating face-to-face can supply a wealth of visual clues for somebody with hearing loss. Your partner will be able to make use of facial cues and body language. It’s also easier to maintain concentration and eye contact. This provides your partner with more information to process, and that typically makes it easier to understand your intent.
- Encourage your partner to come in for a hearing exam: We can help your partner control their hearing loss. Many areas of stress will fade away and communication will be more successful when hearing loss is well controlled. Additionally, managing hearing loss is a safety issue: hearing loss can impact your ability to hear the telephone, smoke detectors and fire alarms, and the doorbell. It might also be difficult to hear oncoming traffic. We can help your partner better regulate any of these potential issues.
After you get diagnosed, then what?
A hearing test is a relatively simple, non-invasive experience. Usually, you will simply put on a pair of headphones and listen for particular tones. You will be better able to manage your symptoms and your relationships after you get a diagnosis.
Take the hearing loss related tension out of your relationship by encouraging your partner to come see us for a hearing assessment.
