That's speculation. Adam exalted his own opinion above God's or else he could never disobey. There may well have been mitigating circumstances that lessened his culpability but to disobey God is foolishness in any case.
I don't know if he exalted, like we're both agreeing on, the passage itself gives very little about Adam's mindset.
Adam was given the fruit, and he ate, there was no description of his mindset, which is why this becomes open to speculation, and when he confesses, and he immediately knew he had done wrong (hence trying to hide, shame). Some people when Adam is confessing his sin, lean into the fact that he mentioned his wife that he was blaming her, as Eve had blamed the serpent but, the text doesn't really say that it just states factually, she gave the fruit, and I did eat.
There doesn't seem to be a statement of pride there just.. fact.
With Lucifer in Isaiah 14, he exalts himself, with the little horn in Daniel he exalts himself, and these are.. deadly amounts of pride these don't get redeemed.
Nebuchadnezzar, had pride, exalted himself, but God chastised him, possibly because Nebuchadnezzar's pride was out of ignorance. Nebuchadnezzar got chastised, acknowledged God, repented, and then wrote scripture.. it's wild. I like to think he actually got saved.
When a created, rational being with free will comes to value God above all else, he has it all; he's "arrived". As with Abraham, we can trust that God is good and will do the right thing no matter what he asks of us. Adam wasn't there yet.
and yet Abraham still messed up some times. both the times he lied about his wife and then.. well. Ishmael
More speculation. I came to study many things, including other religions and the bible and the patristics and sometimes the thoughts of a "great theologian" or two and ended up over many years modifying or leaving behind some beliefs, some of which were very much like your own. I never just say "ditto", but only quote people who agree with me, IOW, assuming that their "greatness" may at least carry more weight than just one more guy on the internet.
What I mean is like, some people will have a question, something ambiguous in scripture, such as Adam's motivation, and they may research it, and other people will have come with their speculation in the past, wrote about it, and people accept it as doctrine. They'll read one of those writings and say "oh well, it's because of that, matter concluded" and I'm looking at it through the lens that if it's not scripture, it's fallible, anyone can be wrong, and so these traditional great theologian writers, can be wrong, just like I can be wrong. It's their speculation, just as I am speculating.
So, in my speculation, multiple questions were being considered:
1. Why did God create marriage and then change His mind about it?
2. Why did Adam disobey God, was he tricked like Eve, did he not believe God's word about it, or was there something else?
3. Why does old testament prophecy still predict people having children on the New Earth and why is there an entire book that doesn't even mention God in canon scripture about love between a man and a woman, with sexual imagery.. when such a thing is considered temporary and done away with?
and it has been an idea that marriage is ended as a
consequence of Adam's sin. Most other people seem to think marriage and procreation were creations related to the fall, in fact and excuse me for saying this I have heard of some Catholics who allegorize the forbidden fruit as being sexuality itself, and that God's original plan was Josephite marriage, citing 1 Corinthians 7:1 and Revelation 14:4
But Genesis 1 and 2 have marriage created before the fall, and God's first instruction to man being "be fruitful and multiply". So it was initially intended that men and women would fill the earth, and not die.