Hearing loss can affect many aspects of your daily life. Untreated hearing loss, for example, can affect your professional life, your favorite hobbies, and even your relationships. Communication can become strained for couples who are coping with hearing loss. Animosity can develop from the increased stress and more frequent arguments. If ignored, in other words, hearing loss can have a significantly negative impact on your relationship.
So, how does hearing loss effect relationships? In part, these difficulties arise because the parties aren’t aware of the hearing loss. After all, hearing loss is usually a slow-moving and difficult to notice 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 issue. This can lead to both partners feeling alienated and can make it hard to find practical solutions.
Frequently, a diagnosis of hearing loss along with practical strategies from a hearing specialist can help couples start communicating again, and better their relationships.
Can relationships be affected by hearing loss?
It’s really easy to overlook hearing loss when it first presents. This can lead to significant misunderstandings between couples. As a result, there are a few common issues that develop:
- Arguments: It isn’t unusual for arguments to take place in a relationship, at least, occasionally. But arguments will be even more aggravating when one or both partners have hearing loss. For some couples, arguments will erupt more often because of an increase in misunderstandings. For others, an increase in arguments could be a result of changes in behavior (for example, boosting the volume on the television to painful levels).
- Couples often 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 circumstances, selective hearing is a conscious action, in other instances, it’s quite unintended. Spouses will often start to miss particular 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”.
- Intimacy may suffer: Communication in a relationship is usually the foundation of intimacy. And when that communication becomes harder, all parties might feel more separated from each other. As a result, hearing loss might introduce friction throughout the relationship, ultimately causing more frustration and tension.
- Feeling ignored: When somebody doesn’t respond to what you say, you’re likely to feel dismissed. This can frequently happen when one partner is suffering from hearing loss and isn’t aware of it. Feeling like your partner is not paying attention to you isn’t good for long-term relationship health.
These problems will often start before anyone is diagnosed with hearing loss. If someone doesn’t know that hearing loss is at the root of the problem, or if they are dismissing their symptoms, feelings of resentment could get worse.
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 formulate new communication strategies, this usually is not a problem. Some of those strategies include the following:
- Patience: This is particularly true when you know that your partner is struggling with hearing loss. You might have to repeat yourself more often or vary the volume of your voice. It may also be necessary to talk in a slower cadence. This kind of patience can be a challenge, but it can also dramatically improve the effectiveness of your communication.
- As much as you can, try to look directly into the face of the individual you’re speaking with: For someone who is dealing with hearing loss, face-to-face communication can give an abundance of visual cues. 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 provides your partner with more information to process, and that typically makes it easier to understand your intent.
- Help your partner get used to their hearing aids: This can include things like taking over tasks that cause significant stress (such as going to the grocery store or making phone calls). There also might be ways you can help your partner get accustomed to their hearing aids and we can help you with that.
- Encourage your partner to come in for a hearing exam: We can help your partner control their hearing loss. When hearing loss is well-managed, communication is generally more successful (and many other areas of tension may recede too). In addition, managing 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 might also be difficult to hear oncoming traffic. We can help your partner better regulate any of these potential issues.
- When you repeat what you said, try utilizing different words: Usually, you will try to repeat what you said when your partner doesn’t hear you. But instead of using the same words over and over again, try changing things up. Certain words might be more difficult to hear than others depending on which frequencies your hearing loss impact most. Changing your word choice can help reinforce your message.
What happens after you get diagnosed?
A hearing exam is a relatively simple, non-invasive experience. In most circumstances, those who undergo tests will do little more than put on specialized headphones and raise a hand when they hear a tone. But a hearing loss diagnosis can be an essential step to more successfully managing symptoms and relationships.
Take the hearing loss associated tension out of your relationship by encouraging your partner to come see us for a hearing assessment.