I never felt like the couple in the song were married, or were even in a relationship (I know about his interview, yes). So even though Browne may have not intended is this way...
It reminded me a lot of how girls and boys cross paths in high school. It sounds like so many "non-relationships" I have known from that time, both involving me and just involving friends. The guy is pursuing a girl, she doesn't care about him and she doesn't care that he is enamored with her. She took the dare purely because it was a dare. She has no emotional connection to it and couldn't care less that he sees her naked in the car. She just wants to be able to say she has done it. In fact, it's almost insulting to him because she has absolutely no fear that he will do anything agressive toward her. She sees him as a puppet. and yet... he tries because he's "too far gone to care". That idea continues in the line where she brushes aside his caress and speaks of "all that she'd not yet done"). She knows he wants her, but feels no obligation to respond to it or even acknowledge it, because it's more fun to keep stringing him along.
They get to her house, where she bolts from the car without a word, as if to say, "Well, I've done that. See ya." And he is left to see her turning on the lights. The "light that would eventually dawn" is him waking up to the fact that she will never care about him and he's letting her make a fool of him. "Forcing me to decide" just means he has to decide to stop waiting for her to want him, because it's never going to happen.
I never felt like the couple in the song were married, or were even in a relationship (I know about his interview, yes). So even though Browne may have not intended is this way...
It reminded me a lot of how girls and boys cross paths in high school. It sounds like so many "non-relationships" I have known from that time, both involving me and just involving friends. The guy is pursuing a girl, she doesn't care about him and she doesn't care that he is enamored with her. She took the dare purely because it was a dare. She has no emotional connection to it and couldn't care less that he sees her naked in the car. She just wants to be able to say she has done it. In fact, it's almost insulting to him because she has absolutely no fear that he will do anything agressive toward her. She sees him as a puppet. and yet... he tries because he's "too far gone to care". That idea continues in the line where she brushes aside his caress and speaks of "all that she'd not yet done"). She knows he wants her, but feels no obligation to respond to it or even acknowledge it, because it's more fun to keep stringing him along.
They get to her house, where she bolts from the car without a word, as if to say, "Well, I've done that. See ya." And he is left to see her turning on the lights. The "light that would eventually dawn" is him waking up to the fact that she will never care about him and he's letting her make a fool of him. "Forcing me to decide" just means he has to decide to stop waiting for her to want him, because it's never going to happen.