38.
We use the terms, love for the opposite sex and conjugial love, because a love for the opposite sex is not the same as conjugial love. A love for the opposite sex is found in a natural person, but
conjugial love in a spiritual person. A natural person loves and wants only external conjunctions, with the physical pleasures arising from them, while a spiritual person loves and wants an internal
conjunction, with the states of spiritual happiness resulting from it. The spiritual person also perceives that these states of happiness are possible with only one wife, with whom he can be continually
joined more and more into one. And the more he is so joined with her, in the same degree he feels his states of happiness ascending and remaining constant to eternity. The natural person, on
the other hand, does not think in this way. That, now, is why we say that conjugial love remains after death in the case of people coming into heaven, who are those who become spiritual on earth.