161. 5. A wife inspires the union in her husband according to her love, and a husband receives it according to his wisdom. The idea that a wife inspires the love and thus the union in her husband is today kept hidden from men. Indeed, they universally deny it. The reason is that their wives persuade them that men alone are the lovers, and themselves recipients, or that men are forms of love, and themselves forms of compliance. They even rejoice at heart when their husbands believe this. Wives persuade their husbands of this for many reasons, all of which have to do with the prudence and circumspect nature of wives (concerning which, something will be said hereafter, and in particular in the chapter on the reasons for states of coldness, separations and divorces between married partners 1 ).
We say that it is wives who inspire or insinuate the love in their husbands, because not a particle of conjugial love, not even of love for the opposite sex, is seated in men, but only in wives and women. The fact of this was vividly shown me in the spiritual world:
[2] A conversation on this very subject once occurred there, and some men, having been persuaded by their wives, kept insisting that they were the lovers, and not their wives, but that their wives were recipients of love from them.
In order to settle the dispute over this question, all women, including their wives, were removed from the men; and together with them the underlying atmosphere of love for the opposite sex was taken away. When this was taken away, the men came into a state altogether foreign to them and never before felt, at which they complained considerably.
Then, while they were in this state, some women were brought to them, and the wives were presented to their husbands; and the women and the wives spoke sweetly to them. But at their blandishments the men became cold, and turning away they said to each other, "What is this? What is a woman?" And when some of the women said that they were their wives, they replied, "What is a wife? We do not know you."
However, when the wives began to grieve over this utterly cold indifference on the part of their husbands, and some of them to cry, an atmosphere of love for the feminine sex and of conjugial love (which to this point had been taken away from the men) was restored. And then at once the men returned to their former state - the ones who loved their marriages into their state, and the ones who loved the opposite sex in general into their state.
Thus the men were convinced that not a particle of conjugial love, not even of love for the opposite sex, resided in them, but only in wives and women. But still, after that, owing to their prudence, the wives induced the men to believe that the love resided in the men, and that some spark of it might possibly have passed from the men to themselves.
[3] I have presented this experience here in order that it may be known that wives are forms of love, and husbands its receivers. Husbands are receivers of it according to the wisdom in them, especially the wisdom which results from religion, which is that they are to love only their wives. And this is plain from considering that when they love only their wives, their love is concentrated, and being also ennobled, remains in its strength, endures and lasts; and that otherwise it would be like taking wheat from a granary and throwing it to the dogs, resulting in an insufficiency at home.
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