I’ve told my partner he needs hearing aids. He won’t listen

My partner refuses to wear hearing aids and is missing vital bits of conversations. How can I get the message through to him that he’s become as deaf as a post?
H.S., Richmond, Vic

Credit: Drew Aitken

Hard-of-hearing people can be weird about hearing aids. They think that wearing a tiny, near-invisible, ear gizmo is going to make them look old and feeble. They’d rather wear no gizmo at all and miss out on conversations, smile inanely at parties and nod their head at the wrong time, so they not only look old and feeble, they look as if they’ve got late-stage dementia, too. They’d
rather infuriate friends and family members by forcing everyone to repeat everything over and over again, at exponentially increasing volumes, until people are shrieking like Al Pacino in Scarface: “DO YOU %$#@ WANT ANOTHER %$#@ SLICE OF %$#@ CAKE?!!!!”

They’d rather sit silently at dinner parties while their partner tells a fascinating dinner-party story, then plunge into the exact same story immediately afterwards, word for word, while their partner gives them a gentle nudge under the table with a steak knife.

So how do you get the message through to a hard-of-hearing person in denial? If you just blurt out, “You’re as deaf as a post!”, they may lip-read it wrong and think you said, “Your death is diagnosed!” which could put a damper on their day. I say you just buy a pair of AirPods and ask him to try them out: apparently, the latest models can be used as clinical-grade hearing aids. He won’t look old and feeble: he’ll look like every single other person walking around with a pair of tampons poking out of their ears. And if anyone asks what he’s listening to, he can be completely honest and say it’s a groovy new playlist he’s just discovered called Good Vibe Sounds of Today.

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