Skip to the tldr if you don't want the novel explaining the reasoning.
A friend gifted me their old Razer Kraken headset a while ago. The leather Razer uses is some CHEAP shit, so the couple years in a closet leading up to it landing on my noggin left it in a state of deterioration that would sprinkle my head and ears with little bits of black leather.
The speakers are good though, and free is free, so no complaints: I hit it with some duct tape and peeled it off repeatedly until all the leather bits were freed up - the cloth layer underneath the leather is now the outermost layer, and no more black sprinkles all over, so yay.
Unfortunately the tape pulling on the ear cushions was a bit too much for whatever adhesive Razer uses to stick em on to their mounting plate, and they pretty much just pulled off. Also no biggie - replacements are pretty cheap on Amazon, so I got a set and lived happily ever after...
...but now I've got the old mounting plates (minus the cushions) and an idea.
So... I do a lot of gaming, wife watches a lot of TV. We do this in the same room, so I pretty much always have my headset on, which blocks most TV noises from getting to me, and most gaming noises from getting to her. Works great until she says something, and all I hear is muffled gibberish until I lift a speaker off my ear and hit her with "What?".
-----------TLDR---------------
My idea is to put... idk... something... on the mounting plate of the side facing her that's stable enough to keep the headphone in the correct position (and not pressing directly on my ear) but basically leaves the space completely open to the environment so that external sound coming from that side isn't muffled.
I'm thinking something like a plastic spiral hair tie, but with an inner diameter large enough to encircle my ear, and the spiral diameter roughly the same as the cussion, at least when its under tension against my head.
something like this:
...but ofc not just a cylindrical spring, but a donut shape. I kinda suck at photoshop, but you get the gist.
The spiral hair tie is the closest actual product I can think of to what I'm picturing, but those are far too small... ideas?
Good idea yourself, ha! Simplify, simplify.
Happy tinkering!