Jeanne Safer is a psychotherapist and author of five books. Her work has been the subject of articles in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. She blogs for The Huffington Post and Psychology Today. In the introduction, Safer writes: "There is no subject in the world more thrilling, or complicated than love in all its manifestations." The Golden Condom is divided into three sections: Hopeless Love, Difficult Love, and Fulfilled Love. Among the subsidiary topics covered in the book are adultery, sadomasochism, friendship, and mentors.

Safer covers the dark side of love — obsession, betrayal, and unrequited longing. She also pays tribute to love that comes late in life; love that triumphs over conflict and hardship; love that endures, even after the death of the beloved; and love that can be retrieved from the shadows of abandonment and betrayal.

Safer opens this therapeutic work with a story of abandonment by a friend whom she viewed as a soul mate. When she was in the hospital with a serious illness she asked this friend to visit but she never appeared. Two years later, this friend contacted Safer but never explained or apologized. Instead, she wanted counsel on her own hospitalization.

This troubling incident brought to Safer's mind a man she loved in college who abandoned her in a similar way. She observes that it is possible to reframe these intimate relationships and see them as spiritual teachers passing on to you the kind of wisdom that comes through suffering and disappointment.

Safer's experience of 40 years of therapeutic treatments lend breadth and depth to her consideration of obsessive love, unrequited love, mourning a lost love, and ways in which opposites can disagree but remain loyal throughout their relationship. With grace and ease, Safer harvests the many different shades of love.