Trying harder to communicate in a 54-year marriage

      We laugh together knowingly with friends when someone just can’t think of the name of a Beatles song or a favorite neighborhood restaurant—or the movie we saw last night. We all know what that’s like.

      This was different.

      “You know I can’t hear you when the water’s running!” is such a common household refrain that it was even the title of a Broadway play decades ago. Forever having to tell someone to come into the room when they’re talking to you can be irritating.

      This was different from that, too.

      What about when your spouse asks you something that he’s asked more than once before in the same situation—but acts as if he’s asking it for the first time? Isn’t that different?

      What about when he says he’s told you something but you have no memory at all of the conversation? Isn’t that different?

      What about when you know you told him something but he insists you just think you did?

      We used to spend too much time arguing about who said what, misheard whom or forgot what.

      Sound funny? It isn’t while it’s happening, I assure you. Dealing with the double whammy of memory and hearing issues, which so commonly go hand in hand in your late 70s, has become a way of life.

      It sure gets old.

      When people have asked the secret of our 50-plus years of marriage, we invariably say a sense of humor. We also often say that we talk everything out. We’re all talkers in our family; we talk about things ad nauseam. (If we really enjoy something, it’s not enough to discuss it enthusiastically once or twice. We love to come back to the topic hours or days later and reiterate just how good that meal or show was and just how much we enjoyed it.)

      For a while, we weren’t mentioning our ability to talk things out as much. We still could at times, but sometimes the frustration and the exasperation of miscommunication were too raw. Instead, we’d gradually cool off and try to move on.

      It used to feel like a contest at times. “See,” he’d say, “I knew we saw that movie.” Score 1 for him. “See,” I’d say, “Alice heard me say that, too.” Tie score.

      So, yes, we’re both defensive sometimes because we’re scared. I tell him I want to know when I’ve forgotten something; I want to be fully aware of my deficit. He says he agrees but didn’t realize how quick he was to always have an explanation for how I was unclear or misconstrued his response.

      We agree that we both have a problem. That’s the first step, right? I wear hearing aids but need to remember to put them in first thing in the morning. He’s been thinking about getting them, too.

      He uses little strategies for remembering things; maybe I don’t use memory aids enough to compensate for my problem. “Mindfulness,” we constantly repeat to each other.

      Still, we needed to get past the defensive/denial stage. We had to be willing to talk stuff out as much as we used to. We had to stop keeping score.

      But how? I knew that it wasn’t too late, but I was afraid that if we just let it go on that way, one day it might be.

      Writing this piece in the present tense a month ago—and showing it to him long before I chose to “publish”—turned out to be an excellent first step. Seeing our familiar scenarios described in black and white was a jolt that got the subject out in the open.

      We still struggle with the challenges, of course, but at least now we can talk about them again.

      This story was originally published in Crow's Feet: Life As We Age on Medium.com.