The McGurk effect. Speaking as a guy who is named after a color I truly appreciate intersting last names and this is a keeper
You simply must click on this link: McGurk
Watch the video then come back here.
Okay, if you didn't click on the link none of the rest of this is going to make any sense so please, click on the link.
Done? Great. didn't that just blow your mind? Go back and listen to the entire video with your eyes closed.
The incredable thing about the McGurk effect is that it is beyond your control. It is proof positive that what you think you hear and what you hear can be two different things.
The McGurk effect works because you have eyes and you have spent your entire life watching people form words and you have come to the inescapable conclusion that when you see someone's teeth on their bottom lip the sound that they are making must be FA. It doesn't matter that the sound is somehting different, it matters only that you rely upon your experience and your belief to control what you experience.
So think how that plays into your relationships with your wife.
Okay, I'll help. You and your wife aren't getting along so great. She says mean things and you think they are intended to hurt you and you are, in fact hurt and that hurt leads to anger, mistrust,and resentment. We've all been down that so much it's been paved.
But McGurk underscores one of the basic tenents of the whole better man better marriage philosopy: sure, there's the chance that your wife is possessed and evil, but there is a greater chance that over the years you have taken misunderstanings and interpreted them to be slights, you've taken attempts at humor to be insensitive attacks, and you have come to expect that when you're wife says something that could be interpreted as either benign, neutral or mean spirited you have trained yourself over the year to hear it only as mean spirited.
You've kept track of the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to and taught yourself not to trust your wife to be kind just as you have taught yourself to hear FA whenever teeth meet lips.
The good news is that while the McGurk effect is so ingrained it is irreversible the same is not true about your perceptions of your wife.
You can change them, and if you do just imagine how that will change your relationship?
What if, and I know this seems crazy, but what if she wasn't nagging, if she wasn't sarcastic, but you've just trained yourself to hear her that way?
Just sit with that for a little bit.
