My crt appears brighter at 48hz when flicker is visible

[jman54]

I know I am going to get hate for this, but I find that my crt appears brighter when I run at 48hz instead of a higher hz so that I can see some amount of flicker. I had a crt monitor and crt tv and noticed the tv was brighter than the monitor but one day I decided to run my monitor at 48hz to see what it was like and immediately noticed it appeared brighter to my eye than the tv when using them separately. Now putting them next to each other the tv was still brighter but if I used them separately the monitor just felt brighter. Now playing games like this is unbearable but for some reason passively watching stuff like anime it doesn't hurt my eyes and the fact that many anime uses brighter shades of colors is really enhanced by what I think might be the longer fade giving more perceived brightness. It isn't like I am watching full screen white, that is still horrible but with a mix of colors and brightness the flicker isn't that bad it is like a gradient of changing brightness.
The flicker is only visible where I am not focusing on a part of the screen if that makes sense. I know the eye perceives flicker around the edges of the eye more than the front so it might have something to do with this? I'm thinking this might be because brighter parts of a scene take longer to fade and at 48hz there is enough black frame downtime that my eye doesn't adapt to a continuously bright display. Of course, I can also see retrace lines at this refresh rate if I lean in and focus, but I find the perceived brightness increase worth it.