Many facets 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 instance. For couples who are coping with hearing loss, communication can become strained. This can cause increased tension, more quarrels, and even the development of animosity. In other words, left uncontrolled, hearing loss can negatively impact your relationship in significant ways.
So how are relationships affected by hearing loss? These difficulties arise, in part, because individuals are usually unaware that they even have hearing loss. After all, hearing loss is usually a slow-moving and hard to detect condition. Communication might be strained because of hearing loss and you and your partner might not even be aware it’s the root of the problem. Workable solutions might be hard to find as both partners feel increasingly alienated.
Relationships can be helped and communication can begin to be mended when hearing loss is diagnosed and couples get practical solutions from us.
Can hearing loss impact relationships?
When hearing loss is in the early stages, it’s difficult to detect. Couples can have considerable misunderstandings as a result of this. As a result, there are some common problems that develop:
- Intimacy may suffer: Communication in a relationship is usually the basis of intimacy. This can cause a rift to build up between the partners. Consequently, hearing loss might introduce friction throughout the relationship, ultimately causing more frustration and tension.
- Feeling ignored: When someone doesn’t respond to what you say, you’re likely to feel ignored. This can frequently happen when one partner is suffering from hearing loss and doesn’t know it. Feeling as if your partner isn’t paying attention to you is not good for long-term relationship health.
- It isn’t uncommon for one of the partners to blame hearing loss on “selective hearing”: Selective hearing is what occurs when somebody hears “we’re having brownies for dessert” very distinctly, but somehow does not hear “we need to take out the garbage before we eat”. In some circumstances, selective hearing is a conscious behavior, in other instances, it’s quite unintended. One of the most common effects of hearing loss on a spouse is that they may begin to miss words or specific phrases will seem garbled. This can frequently be mistaken for “selective hearing,” resulting in resentment and tension in the relationship.
- Arguments: It isn’t abnormal for arguments to occur in a relationship, at least, occasionally. But when hearing loss is present, those arguments can become even more aggravating. Arguments can happen more often too. Hearing loss related behavioral changes, like needing things to be painfully loud, can also become a source of tension
Often, this friction starts to occur before any actual diagnosis of hearing loss. If somebody doesn’t know that hearing loss is at the root of the problem, or if they are ignoring their symptoms, feelings of resentment could get worse.
Living with a person who is dealing with loss of hearing
If hearing loss can cause 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 usually isn’t an issue. Here are some of those strategies:
- Help your partner get used to their hearing aids: This can consist of things like taking over tasks that cause significant stress (such as going to the grocery store or making phone calls). You can also ask your partner’s hearing specialist if there are ways you can help them get accustomed to their hearing aids.
- When you repeat what you said, try making use of different words: When your partner doesn’t understand what you said, you will normally try repeating yourself. But rather than using the same words over and over again, try changing things up. Hearing loss can impact 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.
- Patience: When you recognize that your partner is dealing with hearing loss, patience is especially important. You may have to repeat yourself more often or raise the volume of your voice. It may also be necessary to speak in a slower cadence. This type of patience can be a challenge, but it can also dramatically improve the effectiveness of your communication.
- As much as possible, try to look right into the face of the individual you’re talking with: 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 provides your partner with more information to process, and that usually makes it easier to understand your intent.
- 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 managed. Safety is also a concern with hearing loss because it can cause you to fail to hear the doorbell, phone, and smoke alarm. It may also be difficult to hear oncoming traffic. Your partner can get help controlling any of these potential problems by scheduling an appointment with us.
After you get diagnosed, then what?
Hearing assessments are typically non-invasive and really simple. Usually, you will simply put on a pair of headphones and listen for particular tones. You will be better able to regulate your symptoms and your relationships after you get a diagnosis.
Encouraging your partner to touch base with us can help ensure that hearing loss doesn’t sabotage your happiness or your partnership.