Sex advice with Suzi Godson: I can’t hear my boyfriend’s sweet nothings during sex

Q. I’m going slightly deaf but only in one ear. I have a new boyfriend but I can’t hear it when he whispers sweet nothings in my ear.

It’s too embarrassing to say “pardon?” too many times, and lose the moment. Is there anything I can do?

A. Hearing might seem like one of the least important senses when it comes to sex, but any form of auditory impairment can be a serious obstacle to intimacy.

Good sex involves a whole host of subtle signals and nuances and if you can’t respond appropriately to verbal or aural cues, important connections can be missed.

Sweet nothings, or erotic exchanges, boost arousal and enhance sex for the speaker and listener, so your inability to hear what your boyfriend is saying eliminates opportunities for spontaneity.

It is also possible that your decreased ability to gauge volume might make you more self-conscious about the sounds that you emit during sex.

A 2009 report into the psycho- social aspects of hearing loss by Sergei Kochkin found that people with impaired hearing often overcompensate by pretending that they have heard what people have said, or they avoid asking people to repeat themselves or defensively talk too much to cover up the fact that they cannot hear well.

Impaired hearing distorts normal communication and even mild hearing loss can make a person seem distant and unresponsive.

If you don’t explain your hearing difficulties to your partner, he may eventually assume that you can’t be bothered to listen to him, and that doesn’t bode well for the future of your relationship.

A British National Council on Ageing survey on hearing loss found almost one in two people said that relationships with their partner, friends or family had suffered because they couldn’t hear properly and a third had lost touch with friends or seen their marriages fall apart as a direct result of the breakdown in communication caused by hearing loss.

Because hearing loss usually happens very slowly, people are often unaware of the extent of the damage and it is only when they are fitted with a hearing aid that they realise quite how much hearing they have lost.

Although hearing loss is associated with ageing, specialists are seeing increased numbers of younger patients who have experienced some degree of deafness is due to long-term exposure to music.

A Norwegian study which investigated the impact of hearing loss on mental health and subjective wellbeing found that young people with somewhat impaired hearing suffered more from depression and anxiety than young people who had profound hearing loss because they struggled so hard to function normally.

Other research shows that younger people are less likely to use hearing aids because they feel there is a stigma attached to wearing them.

It takes people an average of 10 years to address their hearing loss.

And although half of all people with hearing loss are under the age of 55, the average age of first-time hearing-aid wearers is close to 70: a great shame because the ageing survey found that when people used hearing aids, many saw improvements in their overall quality of life.

Family relationships improved for 66% of users, mental health improved for 36%, and 34% said they had greater independence and a better social life.

Also, 8% said that wearing a hearing aid had improved their sex life too.

Your reluctance to tell your boyfriend that you have impaired hearing suggests a certain amount of denial about your condition, so I do hope that you haven’t been ignoring it.

‘Slight’ hearing loss might not seem like such a big deal right now, but treatment is often more beneficial when it is started early.

In the past, hearing aids were terribly clunky, but modern devices can be completely invisible.

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