Strange, then, that this curse often doesn't fulfill itself.Those are curses not commandments. A curse fulfills itself.
Actually, it has meant precisely that for most of the history of Christianity:For example just because it says women will have pain in child birth that doesn't mean we don't try to ease the pain with painkillers or something.
Though attempts to treat the pain of childbirth were made in many ancient cultures, a biblical misogyny infiltrated the medical care given to laboring women for centuries in Western society. Christians portrayed pain relief in childbirth as blasphemous, believing it contravened God’s punishment for Eve’s original sin: “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children” (Genesis 3:16). According to Steve Ainsworth at Midwives magazine, incense and prayer (yeah, really) were an accepted analgesic, but “anything else might upset divine intent.”
Misogyny and the Epidural: a Primer
This view is less popular these days, but still held by some Christian groups.
And I get that there are plenty of Christians who don't take either of these passages as commandments to follow, but what I don't get is why there have been so many who took the curse on Eve as a commandment but not the curse on Adam.