In general, men are driven by intellect and women by affections, and because of this men in the Bible generally represent knowledge and truth and women generally represent love and the desire for good. This generally carries over into marriage, where the man's growing knowledge and understanding and the woman's desire to be good and useful are a powerful combination. In many cases in the Bible, then, "husband" refers to things of truth and understanding, much as "man" does. Magnificent things can happen in a true marriage, though, when both partners are looking to the Lord. If a husband opens his heart to his wife, it's as though she can implant her loves inside him, transforming his intellectual urges into a love of growing wise. She in turn can grow in her love of that blooming wisdom, and use it for joy in their married life and in their caring for children and others in their life. Many couples, even in heaven, stay in that state -- called "Spiritual" -- growing deeper and deeper to eternity. There is the potential, though, for the couple to be transformed: through the nurturing love of his wife the husband can pass from a love of growing wise to an actual love of wisdom itself, and the wife can be transformed from the love of her husband's wisdom into the wisdom of that love -- the actual expression of the love of the Lord they have built together. In that state -- called "Celestial" -- the husband represents love and the desire for good, and the wife represents truth and knowledge.

4792. Because food and nourishment correspond to spiritual food and nourishment, taste consequently corresponds to a perception of and an affection for this food. Spiritual food consists in knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom. These are what quicken and also sustain spirits and angels, who desire them and have an appetite for them as men desire and have an appetite for food when they are very hungry. Therefore appetite corresponds to that desire for them. And what is amazing, spirits and angels also grow to maturity on that spiritual food, for those who die as young children do not in the next life look like any but young children, and they are young children too as far as their understanding goes. But as they grow in intelligence and wisdom they cease to look like young children. They now look like those who are coming of age, and at length like adults. I have talked to some who died when they were young children and who looked to me like youths, for by then they had grown in understanding. From this one may see what spiritual food and nourishment are.