Hearing loss can impact many aspects of your day-to-day life. Neglected hearing loss, for instance, can impact your professional life, your favorite pastimes, and even your relationships. For couples who are struggling with hearing loss, communication can become strained. Animosity can develop from the increased tension and more frequent arguments. In other words, left uncontrolled, hearing loss can negatively affect your relationship in substantial ways.
So, how does hearing loss effect relationships? These difficulties arise, in part, because people are often oblivious that they even have hearing loss. Hearing loss typically is, after all, a slowly developing condition. Consequently, you (and your partner) may not notice that hearing loss is the root cause of your communication problems. This can lead to both partners feeling alienated and can make it hard to find practical solutions.
Often, a diagnosis of hearing loss coupled with helpful strategies from a hearing specialist can help couples begin communicating again, and improve their relationships.
Can relationships be affected by hearing loss?
When hearing loss is in the early stages, it’s difficult to detect. Couples can have significant misunderstandings because of this. As a result, there are some common issues that develop:
- Feeling ignored: You would likely feel like you’re being ignored if you addressed someone and they didn’t respond. When one of the partners has hearing loss but is oblivious of it, this can often occur. The long-term health of your relationship can be severely put in jeopardy if you feel like you’re being dismissed.
- Couples frequently mistake 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 instances, selective hearing is a conscious behavior, in other cases, it’s quite unintended. One of the most frequent effects of hearing loss on a partner is that they may start to miss words or specific phrases will seem garbled. This can often be mistaken for “selective hearing,” causing resentment and tension in the relationship.
- Arguments: It’s not abnormal for arguments to happen in a relationship, at least, sometimes. 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. Hearing loss related behavioral changes, such as requiring things to be painfully loud, can also become a source of tension
- Intimacy may suffer: In many relationships, communication is the foundation of intimacy. And when that communication breaks down, all parties may feel more distant from one another. As a result, hearing loss may introduce friction throughout the relationship, leading to more frustration and tension.
These problems will often begin before anyone is diagnosed with hearing loss. If someone doesn’t know that hearing loss is at the core of the problem, or if they are dismissing their symptoms, feelings of resentment could be worse.
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 create so much conflict? For couples who are willing to develop new communication techniques, this usually is not an issue. Here are a few of those strategies:
- Patience: This is particularly true when you know that your partner is coping with hearing loss. You may need to change the way you speak, like raising your volume for example. It might also be necessary to speak in a slower cadence. This kind of patience can be a challenge, but it can also drastically improve the effectiveness of your communication.
- Encourage your partner to come in for a hearing exam: Your partner’s hearing loss can be managed with our help. When hearing loss is well-managed, communication is usually more successful (and many other areas of tension may go away also). In addition, 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 hard to hear oncoming traffic. We can help your partner better regulate any of these potential concerns.
- Try to communicate face-to-face as frequently as you can: Communicating face-to-face can supply a wealth of visual clues for someone with hearing loss. Your partner will be able to read facial cues and body language. And with increased eye contact it will be easier to preserve concentration. This supplies your partner with more information to process, and that usually makes it easier to understand your intent.
- When you repeat what you said, try using different words: When your partner doesn’t hear what you said, you will typically try repeating yourself. But instead of using the same words again and again, try to change things up. Hearing loss can impact some frequencies of speech more than others, which means certain words may be more difficult to understand (while others are easier). Your message can be reinforced by changing the words you utilize.
- Help your partner get used to their hearing aids: Perhaps you could do things like taking over trips to the grocery store or other chores that cause your partner anxiety. There also might be ways you can help your partner get used to their hearing aids and we can assist you with that.
After you get diagnosed, then what?
Hearing assessments are typically non-invasive and quite simple. Typically, you will simply put on a pair of headphones and listen for specific tones. But a hearing loss diagnosis can be an important step to more successfully managing symptoms and relationships.
Encouraging your partner to touch base with us can help guarantee that hearing loss doesn’t undermine your happiness or your partnership.
