It's well written, but really just reads like the over-intellectualised self-justification of a quite warped mind, when one really thinks it through. Surprised Harpers didn't send them advice to go and speak to a therapist, rather than publishing this. The only monster in the article is the writer, Eros has nothing to do with it. The whole scenario is a bizarre construct projected onto the man she's lusting after to fulfil an unmeetable need in her, and he is clearly happily married and not particularly interested, outside of the thrill of being the object of someone's desire and obsession.

The author is quite transparent in that her bond with that man was an unhealthy obsession. But it's an interesting exercise in tying it to older conceptions of romance and lust, instead of settling for the view that it's just a peculiar, pathological form of something normal as we convene today, and we're doing in this subthread. We don't have to agree with her on that argument either.

That's what makes the piece more interesting, that she made this work instead of just telling of her protracted, intermittent affair with a married man. Which is candid and has an element of voyeurism for the reader, but there's lots of places to read of sordid tales and gossip for their own sake.

Heck I've been someone a couple of women have come back to in between relationships that they wouldn't hold on to in the end, but didn't want one with me, something I'm grateful for looking back, and that's about as much as it's worth saying on those relationships of mine. If I were somehow to tie it to a few thousands of years of literary history on the subject, it'd be a different matter.

And yet. “Even after he knew I had met someone else, he continued to contact me periodically.” The man, clearly aware of her distress, continues to act in ways that prolong it.