I actually do wear a hearing aid, but people tell me that they don&#x27;t notice. I also keep my hair a bit on the long side, so it&#x27;s not usually visible. it&#x27;s also very small.<p>I haven&#x27;t really run into anyone who immediately ended a date, but I suspect that I&#x27;ve been declined for dates because of it. I have also gone on strings of dates with women where they eventually either just fizzled out and stopped accepting new dates, or they pulled the &quot;let&#x27;s just be friends&quot; card. I would be foolish to attribute this all to my hearing loss (I can certainly be a difficult person at times), but part of me always wonders.<p>To answer your second question, I think there is still a small stigma attached to it. Glasses are ubiquitous in today&#x27;s society. Hearing aids, not so much. That said, the bluetooth revolution in the last five years has gone a long, long, long way toward making it more acceptable (or at least normal) to see something sticking out of someone&#x27;s ear. Little kids will sometimes come up and ask me what&#x27;s in my ear, but adults never do.<p>That said, my hearing aid is amazing. It has Bluetooth capabilities. I can listen to music without having to wear headphones. I can stream a phone call directly to my hearing aid, without the awkwardness of trying to hold a phone speaker up to my hearing aid microphone. It has volume control, &quot;restaurant mode&quot; for loud situations, and even &quot;music mode&quot; that doesn&#x27;t filter out background noise at all. It&#x27;s pretty fantastic, and I think over time, it will only get better.<p>The biggest hassle I have right now with hearing aids is battery life. I&#x27;ve developed a sixth sense about it, where I&#x27;ll just randomly think, &quot;Huh. When&#x27;s the last time I changed the battery?&quot; and then an hour or two later it will die. Still, sometimes I&#x27;m caught unaware. One time I was at a job interview, and it died on me. I had to excuse myself and go get a fresh pack of batteries from a Walgreens across the street. They still passed me on to the next round of interviews. (I didn&#x27;t get the job, though).<p>If I had a few million dollars to do a hardware startup, I would try and develop a hearing aid that runs off body heat or some other mechanism. The main reason hearing aids are so big is because the case has to hold the battery -- the battery is by far the biggest component. If we could get rid of it, it could just be a band-aid like strip on the back of the ear and practically invisible.<p>Sorry, I digress. Going back to your earlier questions, I should be clear that the visibility of the hearing aid is probably not a problem. The actual hearing loss is probably the biggest turn off. Hearing aids aren&#x27;t like glasses, where you can technically get back to 20&#x2F;20 vision with minor help. You never really get back to 100% hearing with a hearing aid. There&#x27;s always something off. And even my friends sometimes get tired of me saying &quot;What?&quot; all the time.<p>I hope that was helpful. Feel free to email me if you have any further questions. I&#x27;m happy to answer. I believe my email is in my profile.