Couples must learn art, science of hearing loss

Editor: What's the secret to a happy marriage? Does the presence of hearing loss alter your answer? Does it make a happy marriage more difficult to achieve? Here's Rett Murch with some thoughts on how to keep the peace when hearing loss enters the picture. This article was originally published in the Ft. Myers News-Press, and is reprinted with their kind permission.

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Technology helps with listening to partner

According to reliable sources, the most-used word in the English language is "the."

Apparently those reliable sources have not visited a retirement community. In a retirement community the word is "what?"

At least in my retirement house it is and I'm the one using it.

My common uses are "What did you say?" or "What did he say?" or "What did she say?" or "What noise? I didn't hear any noise."

After comparing notes with my neighbors, I find that diminished hearing is sort of an epidemic among older citizens.

It puts a bit of a strain on decades-long marriages.

There are frequent disagreements about who can't hear, who mumbles and who has selective hearing.

At first my wife accused me of selective hearing. She said I ignored simple phrases like "Please take out the garbage" or "Let's go out to eat tonight" or "How do you like my hair?"

Eventually she said, "I think you need your hearing checked."

"Just stop mumbling," I countered.

Then I began to notice that everyone was mumbling. Also, TV actors and every person under 30 were talking too fast.

My granddaughter was about 6 when she diagnosed a problem with my hearing and dealt with it very effectively. After about the third time she had to repeat something to me, she would ask, "Can I speak to Grandma?"

Here's a clue that it's time to have your hearing checked:

If everyone is mumbling ... Hello!

Think about it. What are the odds that every person in the world would simultaneously lapse into mumbling?

I had to face up to my inferior hearing. I have the bad test scores to prove it.

Interestingly enough, and I'm sorry guys but this is common, the test charts show my lost hearing is in the higher ranges. Coincidentally these are the ranges on which my wife's voice roams.

She has a lovely soprano voice when she sings with the Fort Myers Mastersingers. When she wants me to hear her, she has to lower it to about baritone level. If you call our house during a period in which she is talking to me and get a man's voice, it could be her.

Once I surrendered to a hearing aid, I learned about things I thought no longer existed.

As I walked out of the audiologist's office with my first hearing aid, I remarked, "I didn't know there were songbirds in Florida." I had seen a few, but I figured they were mute.

The other thing I wear to keep me among the hearing is a device called "TV Ears." It's a headset that provides personal volume so that I can hear a TV show, fast talkers and all. At the same time, my resident soprano can hear shows at a normal volume level. She says that this is highly preferable to watching TV with a splitting headache.

Her friend Betsy calls TV Ears the "marriage saver."

This whole husband and wife hearing thing cries out for solutions.

Here's one:

Joint hearing tests of couples to determine who can and who can't hear, followed by a session with an authentic mediator.

Authentic mediator:

"Walter, this test indicates that you're deafer than a post."

No answer.

"Can you hear me, Walter?"

"Sure, you said something about heifer on toast. You know I never tried that."

Mediator hands Walter a written sheet basically informing him "Your hearing is shot. Don't blame Mabel."

Then the mediator turns to Mabel:

"The tests show you are the normal hearing person in your marriage. Cut Walter some slack!"

We could also use a technological breakthrough.

How about hearing aids programmed precisely to our spouses' voices? In addition, the aids should include some sort of alert.

It would be patterned after a ship's general alarm announcement. The wearer would suddenly hear a loud clanging bell, followed by "Now hear this! Now hear this!

"Your wife (or husband) is speaking. Listen up!"