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Bitch, Moan, Threaten: How do I get my spouse to accept my loss of hearing acuity as a disability instead of a character fault?

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I can’t imagine this is a unique situation, but my wife gets very angry if I either don’t hear her or misinterpret what I thought I heard her say.

As well, she refuses to do as the audiologists (several, uniformly) say is needed: if you want me to hear you, come to where I am, and or sit where I can see you, instead of talking to me from another room or another level (e.g., my office is in a loft, to which she rarely comes; when she’s sitting in the living room and I look down at her, I do just fine).

I’ve had several other posts on my audiology challenges, which include instances of trying, simultaneously, serially, 4 other providers (which included, eventually, 5 different pairs of aids, and 3 sets of molds) before finally giving up and having weekly adjustments by my maker’s (Beltone) hour-away highly skilled (Beltone sent a company rep to my - also very experienced - audiologist, and failed to make any difference) rep; that eventually resulted in at least a fair ability to hear accurate piano tones (vs horrible compression-induced atonality), and music in general, and my own voice (I - to be accurate, USED TO - sing in a couple of choirs).

However, I’ve moved to another state, and the audiologist here believed that while my most current should be accurate, that due to the volume levels leading to my left ear having feedback, that going to full molds would help.

Indeed, neither ear has any leakage, and the factory produced molds had the original (vs the previous instances of insertions to make the passage smaller) vents; no feedback, either ear. Hooray, I think, as I wear them home.

Until I find that they now echo, and I no longer can reliably understand my wife, despite the volume having been raised on startup to a “7” vs the center “5” which previously was seen on my HearMax app. I’m hopeful that further adjustment MAY assist, though being in the boonies of GA, rather than in the center of the east coast’s retirement population (Vero Beach FL), it takes me more than an hour, each way, to visit, a royal nuisance, let alone the inconvenience and wear/tear/fuel-cost on my 10 year-old creampuff car.

I can’t imagine getting the opprobrium which has become my standard if I’d broken my leg, or lost my left arm, and thus were unable to do as I did before, but it’s a significant challenge to my psychological comfort because she believes I’m ignoring her and gets angry as a result.

Sigh… I apologize for the diatribe, but at very nearly 80, I don’t really have time to deal with this for the rest of my life…

FWIW, previous audiograms posted by me aren’t notably different than the one in April of this year, just before I left FL, and of which I don’t have a paper copy, or I’d post it, in case there were any clues.

Oy.

L8R
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I hear ya (not really, but pun intended :wink:).
I have the same issue. They know it helps with them facing us but they still talk looking away. Yesterday, while facing the other way, she said, “the lady at work said this was odd”. I replied, “she thought her tits were odd?” Almost got slapped for that one. Please, just walk closer and look at me when you talk. But that only seems to work for one day then back to the guessing game.

lol. That’s the game we play (I play). I repeat back what I think I heard. It often gets a laugh.

I find it easier to understand my wife when she is in another room talking on the phone, than when she is near and talking to me.

If she’s been told this by several audiologists and it’s still this big of an issue, I’d consider marriage counselling. It seem like you’re only other option is to put up with it but that doesn’t seem to be working well. As you can tell by comments, this is not a rare issue.

Fortunately my wife consents to wearing an assisted listening device with a microphone. We use a Roger On. I think they are compatible with most hearing aids but they are expensive unless you get them on Ebay.
Ray ( 80 is well in the rearview mirror)

This question is, in essence, about how to win an extremely straightforward argument with one’s wife.

Highly relevant, but perhaps better suited for the “fantasy” section.

Scientists will not figure this one out before we understand dark matter/energy in the Universe, how to apply both quantum mechanics and relativity to singularities, and how reproductive beings arose from organic precursors- i.o.w., this will take a while.

“My wife gets very angry if I either don’t hear her or misinterpret what I thought I heard her say. As well, she refuses to do as the audiologists (several, uniformly) say is needed: if you want me to hear you, come to where I am, and or sit where I can see you, instead of talking to me from another room or another level”

This is my life every day despite constantly telling her “I can’t hear you if I can’t see you.”

Other than this annoyance, there is no other woman on the planet I’d rather be married to, so I put up with it.

Wish I had an answer for you! I do have an idea though…

My wife is a Speech Language Patholigist. One of her two master’s degrees is in deaf education and she used to specialize in work with kids getting cochlear implants. She’s fluent in .

I struggled for years with hearing… I think even back as far as when we were dating, we’d spend a lot of time in situations where I’d understand about 5-10% of what was being said… large groups of friends sitting around a large table in a noisy restaurant, house parties, etc…
I’d be bored and miserable but I’d push through for her…
I guess that I was leaning on lip reading and using context more than even I knew…and was faking it really well too doing things like laughing at jokes just to be polite when I had no idea if it was even funny.

Well as smart as she is and as dumb as I am, I sure did fool her! She often was critical of me and my character flaws of not paying attention to her, etc…
I finally decided to go for a hearing test, just to see where I was… absolutely zero thought or intention of needing or getting aids. It had been several years since I’d gotten any routine hearing tests through work and even back then I had a very minor loss, so I was just curious where I was with it.

Well when I came home with that and a trial set of aids, my wife’s jaw dropped. She said that she had no idea that it was that bad!!!
& this from a girl who knows a little something about working with hard-of-hearing folks!!

I wonder if there’s a simulator that might illustrate to your wife what things sound like to you. I’d bet there’s a video out on youtube that might do a little presentation in different situations to illustrate what it’s like for you vs normal hearing… something like that might garner a little sympathy. My wife had that knowledge, she just needed to see the numbers. Maybe a more simplistic representation might help for folks that don’t understand the numbers…

@bradw said:

I wonder if there’s a simulator that might illustrate to your wife what things sound like to you.

The opening scenes of the film “The Sound of Metal”, is pretty accurate for when I got Glue Ear in 2009

This book may help. It changed my life. It was recommended by someone here and I wish I had their name.

HEAR & BEYOND

Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss

Shari Eberts
Gael Hannan

I’ve had hearijng aids for over 20 years. As my hearing gets worse…

Well I was reacting as a victim of hearing loss. This book changed my attitude. I think I need to read it again.

My thought is that being hearing impaired affects her too. And the people at work.

Another thought. They often think that it must be my fault because I have hearing aids.

In the last 5 years I’ve had two sets of Phonaks First set almost killed me. I couldn’t hear behind and was almost run over at work.3 times. Had those for 1-1/2 years. New hearing aids are 3 years old. As of 2 weeks ago I can finally hear.

I wish some women with husbands would write in to complain about the ridiculous behavior of their spouses in relation to their hearing loss !!! Just our hard luck, I guess, that most of the readers/posters on this forum are (what seem to be) male.

In reply to @DaveL

Blockquote In the last 5 years I’ve had two sets of Phonaks First set almost killed me. I couldn’t hear behind and was almost run over at work.3 times. Had those for 1-1/2 years. New hearing aids are 3 years old. As of 2 weeks ago I can finally hear. /quote

What changed in the last two weeks???

4.5 years of not-success and suddenly you can hear?

Was it tweaking, different audiologist/audiology, or something else?

Convince your wife to wear a set of foam earplugs for at least one full day, two would be more effective. Let her experience a 20-25 loss, her attitude towards your not understanding will probably change considerably. The hard part is getting her to do it.

In reply to @mystuart

(Un)Fortunately due to the prevalence of Presbyacusis: even equal normal forward sloping sensorineural loss in a couple the husband’s ability to understand speech is always worse, simply because of the relative pitch of each voice.

In the case of the the OP; although it’s played that the Wife is ‘at fault’ she might not see it that way, especially if the loss wasn’t pre-existing or if it’s recently passed a particular threshold for speech. It could look like the OP is being selfish by ‘ignoring her’.

We’re also assuming that the aids are actually functional in terms of her voice in their day to day environment: which definitely needs /LSM with her speech as a stimulus over background noise, so they BOTH can get an indication of his actual speech recognition.

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