This verse sits inside the poem's second deliverance, Proverbs 2:16–19.
Her biography, told in two abandonments: the companion of her youth forsaken, the covenant of her God forgotten. Like the perverse man, she is defined by what she left.
The father's lecture on searching for wisdom is one long sentence, a 22-verse poem built like an arch. It rises on conditions: if you receive my words, if you incline your ear, if you cry out, if you seek her as silver and search as for hidden treasure (vv. 1–4). It reaches its keystone twice: then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God (v. 5), then you will understand righteousness, justice, equity, every good path (v. 9). And between the two thens sits the verse that keeps the whole structure from becoming a wage agreement: for the LORD gives wisdom (v. 6). The seeking is real and strenuous, mining vocabulary, digging and crying out, and what the seeker finds at the bottom of the mine is not a wage but a Giver, handing over freely what no digging could manufacture. Seek like it depends on the search; receive like the gift it was all along. That is the poem's deep architecture, and the second half shows what the gift does once it arrives: wisdom entering the heart posts two guards, discretion and understanding (vv. 10–11), who deliver the young man from the two great predators of chapters 1 through 9, the perverse man who loves crooked paths (vv. 12–15) and the seductress who has abandoned covenant (vv. 16–19). The poem ends where Israel's hopes always end, in the land: the upright dwell and remain; the wicked are cut off and uprooted (vv. 20–22). Because the chapter is one sentence, no verse in it stands alone, and every member entry below reads its verse as one stone in this arch.
This verse contributes the seductress's history, and its parallel with v. 13 completes the poem's symmetry: he left the paths of uprightness; she forsook her companion and forgot her covenant. Both predators are leavers. The verse also quietly states the Bible's theology of marriage in passing: the companion of her youth was hers by "the covenant of her God", marriage as covenant witnessed by God Himself, not private arrangement (Malachi 2:14 says it outright). Betrayal of the one was forgetting of the other. For the son, the teaching is the same diagnostic as before, read histories, not presentations: the charm in front of you has a track record behind it, and people who have abandoned covenant once are offering you a covenant-shaped experience with the abandonment included.
Related: Malachi 2:14–15 · Proverbs 5:18
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If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.