You asked for help with one basic task: take the trash out. A little bit later you discover your partner didn’t do it. “I Didn’t hear you”, they state. Funny how that works, how your partner failed to hear the one thing you asked them to do. The popular term for this is “selective hearing,” and it’s often a sign of poor communication.
This “selective hearing” is frequently viewed as a sort of character defect. It’s as if you’re accusing somebody of purposely not listening. But it’s possible that the actual cause behind your selective hearing may not be a short attention span, it might be the early phases of hearing loss.
What is selective hearing?
You’ve likely had at least one or more scenarios in your life where somebody has accused you of not listening, even if no one specifically used the phrase “selective hearing”. When you miss all the stuff you don’t want to hear but hear everything else, that’s selective hearing. You hear the part about the chocolate cake, but you don’t hear the part about the calories. That sort of thing.
It’s very common for people to have selective hearing behavior. However, most studies point to men failing to hear their partners more often than women.
It might be tempting to make some assumptions about that (and the way that people are socialized certainly does play into how this behavior is contextualized). But hearing health is probably another major factor. If your “selective hearing” begins to become more common, it might be a clue that you may have undiagnosed hearing loss.
Hearing loss can cause gaps in communication
Communication will undoubtedly be more difficult with undiagnosed hearing loss. You’re probably not surprised by that.
But one prominent sign of hearing loss is communication issues.
When hearing loss is in those really early phases, there won’t be a lot of obvious symptoms. Maybe you begin turning the volume up on your tv. You can’t quite hear what your friend is saying when you go out for a drink at your local bar. You most likely just assume it’s because of the loud music. But besides situations like that, you might never even notice how loud everyday sounds can be. This lets your hearing slowly (but surely) diminish. You barely notice the problem until you’re at the point where you frequently have trouble hearing conversations.
Your hearing health is worrying your partner
You will notice some of the people close to you are beginning to worry. Yes, selective hearing is a rather common annoyance (even more aggravating when you already feel like nobody is listening to you). But that aggravation often becomes concern when they realize that hearing loss might be the actual culprit.
And your partner may want you to find out what’s going on by having you schedule a hearing test.
It’s important to pay attention to your partner’s concerns. Talk openly with them and accept their help because they care about your well-being and aren’t simply irritated with you.
Early hearing loss has a few other indicators
If your selective hearing is getting worse over time, it might be worth keeping an eye out for some of these other early signs of hearing loss. Here are a few of those signs:
- Requesting that people talk slower and speak up
- Consonants are hard to make out
- Turning up the volume on your mobile phone, television, or radio
- People sound distant or muted when they talk
- Trouble hearing in crowds
If you experience any of these symptoms, it’s worth calling us and getting a hearing test.
Use ear protection
It’s critical that you take steps to protect your ears so that you can prevent hearing loss. If you can’t stay away from overly loud noise, be sure you wear hearing protection, like muffs or plugs. Hearing aids can also help you have more effective communication, which can smooth over many rough patches that your hearing loss may have caused in the first place.
A diminishing attention span will be responsible for the majority of selective hearing incidents in your life. But you may want to take it as a sign that it’s time for a hearing test when people around you begin to observe your selective hearing getting worse.