My ex-wife's theory was that if she smelled the trash stinking, therefore I must have smelt it too, and then I was consciously deciding not to take it out despite it smelling. We're not talking about a full trash here. It could have been mostly empty, but one of us tossed something stinky in there.
The reality was that my nose is not as sensitive as hers.
She actually did say something after smelling the trash 10 times and thinking that I'm deliberately ignoring it. It usually wasn't nice.