The concept of metta makes me feel like an asshole

Cosigned.

 

Shame has often fucked me up but on some occasions it did help quite a bit. Such as the aforementioned adultery incidents. By and large though most of my shame and guilt is not of the useful variety. Which is why I tend to avoid the more shame happy sides of Buddhist problem solving. Good in theory I suppose but awful in execution for me personally.

 

"Adultery" is a word I don't hear used a lot. I hear "cheating" more often. Is the word usage part of the shame part? Like you have to use that word to reinforce that you Did A Bad, and cheating is not as bad, so you can't use that word, you have to use the Bad Word?

Because if some of the shame is surrounding how you articulate the thoughts to yourself, changing what words you use, even internally, can help alleviate some of the pressure of the shame and guilt. I'm just glomming onto "adultery" as an example because you've now used that word twice.

 

Possibly though I don't think so. Personally I think cheating sounds worse. It's more personal whereas adultery is what ends up in things like religious rules. Adultery is more clinical sounding basically.

I do seem to use the word adultery a lot. It's how I tend to refer to the concept just in general.