Eve asked him to come with her, so the way I read what happened is that he ate it due to his love…

But the way it is currently written, and how I interpreted it, Adam followed what Eve asked, so God punishing him for what SHE wanted…

Eve asked him to come with her, so the way I read what happened is that he ate it due to his love for her and not out of his own selfish desire to be with her. So, having God punish Adam for being selfish seemed uncalled for. Unless your point is to show that love for a partner is wrong. If so, that would have been an excellent opportunity for a conversation between God and Adam to show growth. Or perhaps your point is that Adam can’t grow spiritually or emotionally like Even did. Again, another great opportunity for perhaps a follow-up story.

But the way it is currently written, and how I interpreted it, Adam followed what Eve asked, so God punishing him for what SHE wanted really makes Eve the one at fault. So, God’s ONLY retribution for Adam and ONLY praise for Eve seems strange and shows that God is a jerk. Perhaps that’s what you were going for?

God calls it self-centeredness, but Adam called it love. But there was no explanation for why Love=self-centeredness. Or at least none I picked up on.

If you want to be Eve the “good one” and Adam to still come out the “loser,” Eve could have said something like, "I'm happy to be cast out and go alone because I know./I am free/I am strong” and willingly start to leave Adam behind. Which, in response, because of being weak as an individual, would have driven him to run after her physically. Perhaps that’s how you read it or intended it already, and I just needed to write this to figure it out, but it didn’t read that way on the first pass for me. It seems like God is just kind of a manipulative bastard. WHich, again, maybe that’s the point.