Many aspects of your daily life can be impacted by Hearing Loss. Your pastimes, your professional life, and even your love life can be affected by hearing loss, for example. Communication can become tense for couples who are dealing with hearing loss. This can cause increased stress, more arguments, 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 difficulties happen, in part, because people are often not aware that they even have hearing loss. Hearing loss typically is, after all, a gradually developing condition. Consequently, you (and your partner) might not detect that hearing loss is the base cause of your communication problems. This can result in both partners feeling alienated and can make it hard to find workable solutions.
Often, a diagnosis of hearing loss coupled with helpful strategies from a hearing specialist can help couples start communicating again, and better their relationships.
Can hearing loss impact relationships?
It’s very easy to disregard hearing loss when it first presents. This can lead to significant misunderstandings between couples. As a result, there are some common problems that develop:
- Feeling ignored: You would probably feel like you’re being disregarded if you addressed somebody and they didn’t respond. When one of the partners has hearing loss but is unaware of it, this can frequently occur. The long-term health of your relationship can be seriously put in jeopardy if you feel like you’re being disregarded.
- Arguments: It’s not abnormal for arguments to take place in a relationship, at least, sometimes. But when hearing loss is present, those arguments can become even more frustrating. For some couples, arguments will break out more often because of an increase in misunderstandings. For others, an increase in arguments could be a consequence of changes in behavior (for example, increasing the volume on the television to painful levels).
- Intimacy may suffer: In lots of relationships, communication is the foundation of intimacy. This can cause a rift to build up between the partners. Increased tension and frustration are often the consequence.
- 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 absolutely unintentional, and in others, it can be a conscious choice. Spouses will often begin to miss certain words or phrases or these words and phrases will sound garbled when one of them has hearing loss. This can sometimes result in tension and resentment because one spouse confuses this for “selective hearing”.
Often, this friction begins to happen before any formal diagnosis of hearing loss. Feelings of bitterness might be worse when parties don’t suspect hearing loss is the core problem (or when the partner with hearing loss insists on disregarding their symptoms).
Tips for living with someone who has hearing loss
If hearing loss can create so much conflict in a relationship, how do you live with someone who is dealing with hearing loss? For couples who are willing to develop new communication strategies, this typically isn’t an issue. Here are some of those strategies:
- When you repeat what you said, try using different words: Normally, you will try to repeat what you said when your partner fails to hear you. But instead of using the same words over and over again, try changing things up. Hearing loss can affect some frequencies of speech more than others, which means some words may be harder to understand (while others are easier). Changing your word choice can help strengthen your message.
- Encourage your partner to come in for a hearing exam: We can help your partner regulate their hearing loss. When hearing loss is well-managed, communication is usually more successful (and many other areas of stress may recede as well). In addition, treating 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 may also be difficult to hear oncoming traffic. We can help your partner better manage any of these potential problems.
- Help your partner get used to their hearing aids: Maybe you could do things like taking over the grocery shopping or other chores 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: When you recognize that your partner is dealing with hearing loss, patience is especially important. You may have to change the way you speak, like raising your volume for example. It may also be necessary to speak in a slower cadence. This kind of patience can be a challenge, but it can also dramatically improve the effectiveness of your communication.
- Try to communicate face-to-face as often as you can: For somebody who is dealing with hearing loss, face-to-face communication can give lots of visual cues. You will be providing your partner with body language and facial cues. And with increased eye contact it will be easier to maintain concentration. This supplies your partner with more information to process, and that usually makes it easier to understand your intent.
After you get diagnosed, then what?
Hearing assessments are generally non-invasive and really simple. In most circumstances, individuals who undergo tests will do little more than put on specialized headphones and raise a hand when they hear a sound. You will be better able to regulate your symptoms and your relationships after you get a diagnosis.
Encouraging your partner to get in touch with us can help guarantee that hearing loss doesn’t sabotage your happiness or your partnership.
