Sting is my favorite male artist besides Gordon Lightfoot. What a coincidence this is. Even more so, Sting's real name is Gordon too LOL
EBYT is not one of my favorite songs of his but not for the reasons you are describing. I just think there are better songs of his than that. But anyway, Sting himself knows that it is not a love song. He knows that it had dark obsessive connotations, but unfortunately the average public listener was not aware of it at the time.