As many baby-boomer wives know, marriages face new challenges as couples age. These hurdles are not necessarily more difficult, but they are different. One common problem is coping with a husband hard of hearing. Since hearing loss happens to most people after the age of 75, this changes life for more than half the senior population.
One significant change is that the peaceful home may be peaceful no longer. If you're a wife whose husband comes home tired from a long day, or whose husband has retired and is around the house all day (another life change!), you may have noticed that the television has become so loud that ignoring it even in other rooms is impossible. Fortunately, there are things like ear phones that can help one person hear the sound without deafening everyone else.
Another problem, and one not so easily solved, is that what goes first for many men is high-pitched sounds. This means they have difficulty hearing their wives, daughters, and grandchildren speak. A wife may lose the ability to converse happily in the car, to talk from another room, or to have boisterous family gatherings with everyone milling around together. Fathers become increasingly shut out of general conversations.
Husbands also may react badly to being shouted at, which a lot of wives find themselves doing. It's hard to sound dulcet and winsome at the top of your voice, and shouting also may cause a more severe expression than you intend. Counselors familiar with this conflict suggest looking directly at your man and speaking slowly and clearly rather than at very loud volume. This, unfortunately, requires more effort, and many women, experiencing the fatigue that often accompanies the 'golden years', may resent this.
Hopefully both partners want to avoid letting a physical problem derail a happy union. The husband may have to steel himself to getting hearing aids - never as good as natural sound - and having them adjusted until they work well. The wife will have to remember not to talk from the other room, to allow for background noise, and to keep a pleasant expression on her face even as she repeats herself.
There is also surgery, which once used to be performed mostly on children with a lifetime of impairment before them but is now not unusual among seniors. It's really worth investigating what can be done to help your spouse hear things like the grandchildren, general conversations when the family gets together, voices on the phone, and sermons in church.
If you don't face this problem yet, it's still a good idea to get informed. All sorts of illnesses (heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other circulatory problems) and medications can cause men to lose their hearing. Deafness, they say, is more isolating than blindness, so it's worth protecting your ears early in life and finding solutions to help people hear later.
Specialists, clinics, and professional technicians can provide information and testing to determine the level of loss. It will really help if husbands and wives work together to anticipate this problem and seek solutions.
One significant change is that the peaceful home may be peaceful no longer. If you're a wife whose husband comes home tired from a long day, or whose husband has retired and is around the house all day (another life change!), you may have noticed that the television has become so loud that ignoring it even in other rooms is impossible. Fortunately, there are things like ear phones that can help one person hear the sound without deafening everyone else.
Another problem, and one not so easily solved, is that what goes first for many men is high-pitched sounds. This means they have difficulty hearing their wives, daughters, and grandchildren speak. A wife may lose the ability to converse happily in the car, to talk from another room, or to have boisterous family gatherings with everyone milling around together. Fathers become increasingly shut out of general conversations.
Husbands also may react badly to being shouted at, which a lot of wives find themselves doing. It's hard to sound dulcet and winsome at the top of your voice, and shouting also may cause a more severe expression than you intend. Counselors familiar with this conflict suggest looking directly at your man and speaking slowly and clearly rather than at very loud volume. This, unfortunately, requires more effort, and many women, experiencing the fatigue that often accompanies the 'golden years', may resent this.
Hopefully both partners want to avoid letting a physical problem derail a happy union. The husband may have to steel himself to getting hearing aids - never as good as natural sound - and having them adjusted until they work well. The wife will have to remember not to talk from the other room, to allow for background noise, and to keep a pleasant expression on her face even as she repeats herself.
There is also surgery, which once used to be performed mostly on children with a lifetime of impairment before them but is now not unusual among seniors. It's really worth investigating what can be done to help your spouse hear things like the grandchildren, general conversations when the family gets together, voices on the phone, and sermons in church.
If you don't face this problem yet, it's still a good idea to get informed. All sorts of illnesses (heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other circulatory problems) and medications can cause men to lose their hearing. Deafness, they say, is more isolating than blindness, so it's worth protecting your ears early in life and finding solutions to help people hear later.
Specialists, clinics, and professional technicians can provide information and testing to determine the level of loss. It will really help if husbands and wives work together to anticipate this problem and seek solutions.
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