I agree that it’s been mainly treated as a drug/addiction in the show, but in this particular case I was reading it as more like someone who loves both her career and her spouse and is being asked to choose between the two.
Isn’t that rather cherry picking though? This isn’t a career in the sense that Rumple has an obligation to be the Dark One for his own self fulfillment or the fulfillment of the town/universe. Rumple actually wasn’t the DO for an entire arc and still he took back on that dark mantel because it means more to him than anything else. It’s like a heroin addict giving up heroin for a brief bought of sobriety and then falling off the wagon because he remembered how good heroin feels.
[adrotate group="5"]
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"