Metaphor gone wrong

Via Arts & Letters Daily, Cristina Nehring writes in the NYT book review section:

What with safe sex, prenuptial agreements and emotional air cushions of every stripe, we have almost managed to riskproof our relationships. The notion that passion might comprise not only joy but pain, not only self-realization but self-abandonment, seems archaic....And yet there's a grandeur to high-stakes romance, to self-sacrifice, that's missing from our latex-love culture -- and it's a grandeur we perhaps crave to recover.

I think it's safe to assume that, while medieval lovers had to face the dangers of unwanted pregnancy and religiously-motivated punishment, AIDS was not really on their radars. Using "latex" as a metaphor for romantic reticence just doesn't make any sense. People with AIDS are unlikely to look upon their disease as a charming reminder of their "self-abandonment" several years before, and do not always know which lover gave them the disease, which means that, if this even needs to be emphasized, there's nothing romantic about it in the least. You can put yourself out there emotionally and let yourself get hurt while still being responsible to both yourself and your lover, not to mention the world.

As for Nehring's broader argument, I don't exactly see what she means by "emotional air cushions of every stripe." There has never been a moment in history when romance has been simple, or when people have been uninterested in its pursuit. We have not yet reached the age of the orgasmatron, and we never will.