37.
(4) Especially does a love for the opposite sex remain, and in the case of people coming into heaven, namely, people who become spiritual on earth, conjugial love. A love for the opposite sex remains
in a person after death for the reason that a male is then still a male, and a female still a female, and masculinity in the male is masculine in the whole and every part of him, likewise femininity
in the female, and there is a capacity for conjunction in every detail - indeed, in every least detail - of the two sexes. Now, because that capacity for conjunction was introduced from creation
and is therefore permanently present in the two sexes, it follows that each yearns for and aspires to conjunction with the other. Love regarded in itself is nothing but a desire for and consequent
effort to conjunction, and conjugial love is a desire for and effort to conjunction into one. For the human male and the human female were so created that from being two they might become as though
one person or one flesh.* And when they become one, then taken together they are man in his fullest sense.** But without that conjunction they are two, and each is like a person divided or half a
person. Now, because that innate capacity for conjunction lies inmostly within every single aspect of the male and in every single aspect of the female, and an ability and desire for conjunction
into one is present in every part, it follows that a mutual and reciprocal love for the opposite sex remains in people after death. * Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:4-6, Mark 10:6-9. ** Cf. Genesis 1:27.