The reason why those who enjoy truly conjugial love have eternity in view is that eternity is contained within this love. This is because this love increases for ever in the case of the wife, and wisdom increases for ever in the case of the husband; and as these increase and develop, the couple plunges deeper and deeper into the blessings of heaven, which lie hidden in their wisdom and also the love for it. So if the notion of eternity were torn away, or by any accident slipped from their minds, it would be as if they were cast down from heaven.

[2] The following experience made it perfectly clear to me what happens to couples in heaven, if the notion of eternity is lost from their minds, and its place is taken by the notion of impermanence.

A married couple were once given permission to visit me from heaven. Then a joker by his cunning arguments took away from them the notion of eternity in marriage. Without it they began to grumble, saying that they could not go on living and were suffering such vexation as never before. When their fellow angels in heaven noticed this, they chased the joker away and cast him down. The moment this was done, their notion of eternity was restored, which filled them with heartfelt gladness, and they embraced each other most lovingly.

[3] As well as this, I heard of a married couple who thought of their marriage at one time as eternal, and at another as temporary. This was because they were inwardly quite unlike. When they thought of it as eternal, they were very happy with each other. But when they thought of it as temporary, they said, 'This is no longer a marriage,' and the wife said, 'I'm no longer a wife, but a concubine,' and the man 'I'm no longer a husband, but an adulterer.' So when their inward unlikeness was revealed, the man left the woman and she left him. But later on, since each thought of marriage as eternal, they were given companions of similar character.

[4] These experiences allow us to see clearly that those who enjoy truly conjugial love have eternity in view; and if this notion slips out of their inmost levels of thought, they suffer disunion in their conjugial love, however much they retain their friendship. For this is lodged in the outer levels, but love in the inner ones. It is much the same with marriages on earth. When couples there love each other dearly, they think of their partnership as eternal, and pay no attention to its being ended by death. But if they do think of this, it upsets them; though they are revived by hope, when they think of it continuing after death.

216bis* (vii) Conjugial love is lodged with chaste wives, but their love still depends upon their husbands.

The reason is that wives are by birth forms of love, so that it is innate in them to wish to be one with their husbands, and by keeping this thought in their will they constantly nurture their love. So abandoning the effort to unite themselves with their husbands would be abandoning their own nature. But it is different with husbands; since they are not by birth forms of love, but designed to receive that love from their wives, the more readily they receive it, the more readily do their wives come in with their love. But if they fail to receive it, their wives equally stay outside with their love and wait. This happens in the case of chaste wives, but it is different with the unchaste. These considerations will establish that conjugial love is lodged with wives, but their love depends upon their husbands. * This number appears twice in the original.