The Old Testament

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me

The New Testament

The Heavenly Doctrines

For people who desire truly conjugial love, the Lord provides similar partners, and if they are not found on earth, He provides them in heaven

Truly conjugial love with its delights comes only from the Lord and is given to those who live according to His commandments

The Lord's Divine providence is most specific and most universal in connection with marriages and in its operation in marriages, because all delights of heaven flow from the delights of conjugial love, like sweet waters from a gushing spring

Marriage Is Eternal

Those who during their lifetime have found happiness in marriage because of genuine conjugial love find happiness again in the next life, so that the happiness experienced by them in one life is continued into that of the other, where it becomes a union of minds, in which is heaven

[T]he delight of true marriage love not only endures to old age in the world, but after death becomes the delight of heaven and is there filled with an interior delight that grows more and more perfect to eternity. The varieties of blessedness of true marriage love could be enumerated even to many thousands, not even one of which is known to people, or could enter into the comprehension of any one who is not in the marriage of good and truth from the Lord

[An angel] then said that the wives, who now looked like young girls, had once been wrinkled old ladies in the world, and that the husbands, who now looked like adolescent youths, had once been decrepit old men there. They have all been returned by the Lord to the bloom of this youthful age, he said, because they loved each other and out of religion abstained from adulterous affairs as enormous sins.
He added as well that only those people know the blissful delights of conjugial love who reject the horrible delights of adultery. And no one can reject these except one who is wise from the Lord, and no one is wise from the Lord unless he performs useful services from a love of doing them.

Truly conjugial love lasts to eternity-the wife becoming more and more a wife, and a husband becoming more and more a husband. The fundamental reason for this is that in a marriage of truly conjugial love, each partner becomes more and more deeply human, for that love opens the deeper aspects of their minds, and as these are opened, a person becomes more and more human

Most married couples meet after death, recognize each other, associate, and live together for a time, which occurs in their first state, thus while they are still maintaining the outward aspects of their lives as they did in the world. There are two states that a person goes through after death, an external state and an internal state. A person comes first into the external state, and afterwards into the internal one. It is during the external state-if both partners have died-that they meet, recognize each other, and, if they lived together in the world, associate and live together for a time. And when they are in this state, one partner does not know the other's feelings toward him, because these feelings keep themselves hidden inside. Later, however, when they come into their internal state, the feelings manifest themselves. And if these feelings are concordant and congenial, the partners continue their married life. But if these feelings are discordant and uncongenial, they end it.

If a man has had several wives, he associates with them in turn, so long as he is in the external state. But when he comes into the internal state, and perceives what their feelings of love are like, he then either chooses one or leaves them all…. Let it be known that husbands rarely recognize their wives, but that wives readily recognize their husbands. The reason is that women have an interior perception of love, while men have only a more superficial perception

When married partners there love each other tenderly, they think of eternity in regard to the marriage covenant, and not at all of its being terminated by death. Or if they do think about this, they grieve, until strengthened again with hope by the thought of its continuing in the life to come

People who are in a state of truly conjugial love look to eternity in their marriage because eternity is inherent in this love. Its eternity is owing to the fact that this love in the wife and wisdom in the husband grow to eternity, and as these grow or progress, the partners enter more and more deeply into the blessings of heaven-blessings which their wisdom and love of wisdom at the same time carry concealed within them

People who before had lived with their partners in a state of truly conjugial love have been united in respect to their souls and so in respect to their minds. This union, being a spiritual one, is an actual coupling of the soul and mind of one to the soul and mind of the other, which cannot in any way be dissolved. Because married partners so united yearn for eternity in their marriage, and eternal happiness for them is founded on that idea, they are not actually separated by the death of one. For the spirit of the deceased continues to dwell with the spirit of the one not yet deceased, and this until the death of the other, at which time they come together again and are reunited, loving each other even more tenderly than before, because they are in the spiritual world

Those who are in love truly conjugial, after death, when they become angels, return into their youth and adolescence. The males, however worn out with age, become young men; and the wives, however worn out with age, become young women. Each conjugial partner returns into the prime of life and into the joys of the age in which conjugial love begins to intensify life with new delights…. A person who had shunned adulteries as sins, and was initiated by the Lord into conjugial love in the world, comes into this state, first exteriorly, afterwards more and more interiorly to eternity.

Because they are always growing more interiorly young, it follows that love truly conjugial increases and enters into the delights and joys provided for it from the creation of the world. These are the delights and joys of the inmost heaven, arising from the love of the Lord toward heaven and the church, and thence from the mutual love of good and truth; from this love every joy in the heavens is derived.

The reason why a person thus grows young in heaven is, that he then enters into the marriage of good and truth. And there is in good an effort of continually loving truth, and in truth there is an effort of continually loving good; and then the wife is good in form, and the man is truth in form. It is from that effort that a person puts off all severity, senile harshness, mournfulness, and want of vitality, and puts on the activity, gladness, and freshness of youth, from which the effort receives life and becomes joy

The delights of conjugial love advance toward heaven into more and more blessedness and happiness even to what is beyond number and description

Regarded in its essence, conjugial love is the fundamental love of all loves in heaven and the church, because it originates from the marriage between good and truth, and from this marriage spring all the loves which form heaven and the church in a person…. Truly conjugial love is nothing but a union of love and wisdom. Two married partners who have this love between them and in them at the same time are a reflection and image of it. In the heavens, too, where the looks of their faces are genuine representations of the affections of their love, they are all likenesses of it…

The Nature of Conjugial Love

Heavenly conjugial love consists in one living, content in the Lord, together with one's partner whom one loves very tenderly, and with one's children. In the world this brings a person a deeper pleasure, and in the next life heavenly joy

It is the nature of love to will to share with another, indeed, to confer joys upon another whom it loves from the heart, and to seek its own joys in return from doing so

Friendship introduces the love and causes it to be truly conjugial; and then the love in turn causes this, its friendship, to become also conjugial-a friendship which differs greatly from that of any other love, because it is a full one

Love with its inmost friendship constantly increases in the wife, and wisdom with its happiness in the husband, and this to eternity

The states produced by this love are innocence, peace, tranquility, inmost friendship, complete trust, a mutual desire of the mind and heart to do the other every good; also, as a result of all these, bliss, felicity, delight, pleasure, and, owing to an eternal enjoyment of states like this, the happiness of heaven

[I]n people who are in a state of truly conjugial love, this union becomes deeper and deeper to eternity…. When friendship and mutual trust join together with the first love in marriage, conjugial love results, which opens the partners' hearts and inspires in them the sweet enjoyments of love, and this more and more deeply as friendship and trust are added to the original love, and as that original love enters into this friendship and trust and they into it