Many facets of your day-to-day life can be affected by Hearing Loss. Untreated hearing loss, for example, can affect your professional life, your favorite pastimes, and even your relationships. For couples who are struggling with hearing loss, communication can become tense. Animosity can develop from the increased tension and more frequent arguments. In other words, left uncontrolled, hearing loss can negatively impact your relationship in significant ways.
So, how does hearing loss impact relationships? These challenges happen, in part, because individuals are often unaware that they even have hearing loss. After all, hearing loss is usually a slow-moving and hard to detect condition. Communication may be strained 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 difficult to find workable solutions.
Relationships can be helped and communication can start to be mended when hearing loss is diagnosed and couples get effective solutions from us.
Can hearing loss affect relationships?
It’s very easy to disregard hearing loss when it first presents. This can lead to substantial misunderstandings between couples. The following common problems can develop as a result:
- Feeling ignored: When somebody doesn’t respond to what you say, you’re likely to feel ignored. When one of the partners has hearing loss but is unaware of it, this can often take place. Feeling like your partner is not paying attention to you is not good for long-term relationship health.
- Arguments: Arguments are fairly common in pretty much all relationships. But arguments will be even more aggravating when one or both partners are dealing with hearing loss. For some couples, arguments will break out more frequently because of an increase in misunderstandings. Hearing loss related behavioral changes, like needing volumes to be painfully loud, can also become a source of tension
- 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”. Sometimes, selective hearing is absolutely unintentional, and in others, it can be a conscious decision. Spouses will frequently begin to miss particular words or phrases or these words and phrases will sound jumbled when one of them has hearing loss. This can often be mistaken for “selective hearing,” resulting in resentment and tension in the relationship.
- Intimacy may suffer: In lots of relationships, communication is the cornerstone 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.
In many cases, this friction starts to happen before any formal 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).
Living with a person who is dealing with loss of hearing
How do you live with somebody who has hearing loss when hearing loss can result in so much conflict? This will only be an issue for couples who aren’t willing to establish new communication strategies. Some of those strategies include the following:
- Patience: This is particularly true when you know that your partner is struggling with hearing loss. You may have to repeat yourself more often or raise the volume of your voice. You may also have to speak more slowly. This type of patience can be challenging, but it can also dramatically 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. Many areas of stress will fade away and communication will be more successful when hearing loss is well controlled. Additionally, 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. You might also fail to hear oncoming traffic. Your partner can get assistance controlling any of these potential issues by scheduling an appointment with us.
- Help your partner get used to their hearing aids: Maybe you could do things like taking over the grocery shopping or other tasks 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.
- Utilize different words when you repeat yourself: Usually, you will try to repeat what you said when your partner doesn’t hear you. But rather than 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 might be more difficult to understand (while others are easier). Your message can be reinforced by changing the words you utilize.
- As much as possible, try to look directly into the face of the individual you’re talking with: For somebody who has hearing loss, face-to-face communication can give an abundance of visual cues. Your partner will be able to make use of facial cues and body language. And with increased eye contact it will be easier to maintain concentration. This provides your partner with more information to process, and that typically makes it easier to understand your intent.
What happens after you get diagnosed?
A hearing exam is a fairly simple, non-invasive experience. Usually, you will simply put on a pair of headphones and listen for particular tones. 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 exam.