Many aspects of your day-to-day 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 tense. This can cause increased tension, more disputes, and even the growth of animosity. If ignored, in other words, hearing loss can have a significantly negative effect on your relationship.
So, how does hearing loss impact relationships? These challenges arise, in part, because individuals are usually unaware that they even have hearing loss. After all, hearing loss is typically a slow-moving and hard to recognize condition. Communication might be strained because of hearing loss and you and your partner may not even be aware it’s the root of the issue. Practical solutions may be hard to find as both partners feel more and more alienated.
Relationships can be helped and communication can begin to be repaired when hearing loss is diagnosed and couples get reliable solutions from us.
Can relationships be impacted by hearing loss?
It’s really easy to ignore hearing loss when it first presents. This can result in significant misunderstandings between couples. The following common problems can develop as a result:
- Arguments: Arguments are fairly common in almost all relationships. But when hearing loss is present, those arguments can be even more aggravating. For some couples, arguments will erupt more frequently due to an increase in misunderstandings. For others, an increase in arguments could be a result of changes in behavior (for instance, increasing the volume on the television to painful volumes).
- Couples often confuse hearing loss for “selective hearing”: Selective hearing is when somebody easily 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 unintended, and in others, it can be a conscious decision. One of the most common effects of hearing loss on a spouse is that they may begin to miss words or certain phrases will seem garbled. This can frequently be mistaken for “selective hearing,” leading to resentment and tension in the relationship.
- Intimacy may suffer: Communication in a relationship is usually the basis of intimacy. And when that communication breaks down, all parties may feel more separated from one another. Increased tension and frustration are frequently the consequence.
- Feeling ignored: When someone doesn’t respond to what you say, you’re likely to feel disregarded. This can often occur when one partner is experiencing hearing loss and isn’t aware of it. The long-term health of your relationship can be seriously put in jeopardy if you feel like you’re being disregarded.
Often, this friction starts to happen before any actual diagnosis of hearing loss. Feelings of bitterness may be worse when parties don’t suspect hearing loss is the root issue (or when the partner with hearing loss insists on ignoring their symptoms).
Tips for living with someone who is dealing with hearing loss
How do you live with a person who is dealing with hearing loss when hearing loss can cause so much conflict? For couples who are willing to formulate new communication strategies, this typically isn’t a problem. Some of those strategies include the following:
- As much as you can, try to look directly into the face of the person you’re talking with: For somebody who has hearing loss, face-to-face communication can give an abundance of visual cues. You will be supplying your partner with body language and facial cues. And with increased eye contact it will be easier to preserve concentration. By giving your partner more visual information to process they will have a simpler time understanding what you mean.
- Use different words when you repeat yourself: Usually, you will try to repeat what you said when your partner fails to hear you. But rather than using the same words over and over again, try to change things up. Hearing loss can impact some frequencies of speech more than others, which means certain words may be harder to understand (while others are easier). Your message can be strengthened by changing the words you use.
- Help your partner get used to their hearing aids: This can include things like taking over tasks that cause substantial anxiety (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.
- 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 usually more successful (and many other areas of tension may go away too). 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. We can help your partner better regulate any of these potential issues.
- Patience: This is especially relevant when you recognize 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. The effectiveness of your communication can be substantially improved by exercising this kind of patience.
What happens after you get diagnosed?
Hearing assessments are typically non-invasive and quite simple. In most circumstances, people who undergo tests will do little more than put on specialized headphones and raise their hand when they hear a tone. You will be better able to manage your symptoms and your relationships after you get a diagnosis.
Take the hearing loss associated tension out of your relationship by encouraging your partner to come see us for a hearing test.
