Many facets of your daily life can be impacted by Hearing Loss. Your hobbies, your professional life, and even your love life can be impacted by hearing loss, for instance. For couples who are struggling with hearing loss, communication can become strained. This can cause increased tension, more disputes, and even the growth of animosity. If ignored, in other words, hearing loss can have a substantially negative effect on your relationship.
So how are relationships impacted by hearing loss? These difficulties arise, in part, because people are usually oblivious that they even have hearing loss. After all, hearing loss is typically a slow-moving and hard to notice condition. Consequently, you (and your partner) might not detect that hearing loss is the underlying cause of your communication issues. Workable solutions might be difficult to find as both partners feel increasingly alienated.
Relationships can be improved and communication can start to be repaired when hearing loss is diagnosed and couples get effective solutions from us.
Can relationships be impacted by hearing loss?
When hearing loss is in the early phases, it’s difficult to detect. Couples can have substantial misunderstandings because of this. The following common problems can develop as a result:
- Feeling ignored: You would probably 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 unaware of it, this can often happen. The long-term health of your relationship can be seriously put in jeopardy if you feel like you’re being ignored.
- Intimacy may suffer: Communication in a relationship is often the basis of intimacy. This can cause a rift to build up between the partners. Consequently, hearing loss might introduce friction throughout the relationship, leading to more frustration and tension.
- Arguments: Arguments are pretty common in pretty much all relationships. But arguments will be even more frustrating when one or both partners are dealing with hearing loss. For some couples, arguments will ignite more frequently because of an increase in misunderstandings. Hearing loss associated behavioral changes, such as requiring things to be painfully loud, can also become a source of tension
- It’s not uncommon for one of the partners to blame hearing loss on “selective hearing”: Selective hearing is when somebody effortlessly 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 action, in other cases, it’s quite unintentional. One of the most frequent effects of hearing loss on a spouse is that they may start to miss words or specific phrases will seem garbled. This can frequently be mistaken for “selective hearing,” leading to resentment and tension in the relationship.
In many cases, this friction starts to happen before any formal diagnosis of hearing loss. If somebody doesn’t know that hearing loss is at the core of the issue, 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 lead to so much conflict in a relationship, how do you live with someone who has hearing loss? This will only be an issue for couples who aren’t willing to develop new communication strategies. Some of those strategies include the following:
- Patience: When you’re aware that your partner is dealing with hearing loss, patience is particularly important. You may have to repeat yourself more often or vary the volume of your voice. It may also be necessary to talk in a slower cadence. The effectiveness of your communication can be significantly improved by practicing this kind of patience.
- When you repeat what you said, try making use of different words: Normally, you will try to repeat what you said when your partner doesn’t hear you. But instead of using the same words again and again, try changing things up. Hearing loss can impact some frequencies of speech more than others, which means some words might be harder to understand (while others are easier). Changing your word choice can help strengthen your message.
- Help your partner get used to their hearing aids: Perhaps 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 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 manage their hearing loss. Many areas of tension will fade away and communication will be more successful when hearing loss is well managed. 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. Your partner can get assistance controlling any of these potential issues by scheduling an appointment with us.
- Try to talk face-to-face as often as you can: Communicating face-to-face can supply a wealth of visual cues for someone with hearing loss. Your partner will be able to read facial cues and body language. It’s also easier to preserve concentration and eye contact. By giving your partner more visual information to process they will have an easier time understanding what you mean.
What happens after you get diagnosed?
Hearing assessments are generally non-invasive and quite simple. In most instances, those who are tested will do little more than wear specialized headphones and raise a hand when they hear a sound. You will be better able to regulate 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.
