e and life; and women are born loves; whereas men, with whom they
unite themselves in order that they may be loved in return, are
receptions. Moreover love is continually efficient; being like heat,
flame, and fire, which perish if their efficiency is checked. Hence the
inclination to unite the man to herself is constant and perpetual with
the wife: but a similar inclination does not operate with the man
towards the wife, because the man is not love, but only a recipient of
love; and as a state of reception is absent or present according to
intruding cares, and to the varying presence or absence of heat in the
mind, as derived from various causes, and also according to the increase
and decrease of the bodily powers, which do not return regularly and at
stated periods, it follows, that the inclination to conjunction is
inconstant and alternate with men.

161. V. CONJUNCTION IS INSPIRED INTO THE MAN FROM THE WIFE ACCORDING TO
HER LOVE, AND IS RECEIVED BY THE MAN ACCORDING TO HIS WISDOM. That love
and consequent conjunction is inspired into the man by the wife, is at
this day concealed from the men; yea, it is universally denied by them;
because wives insinuate that the men alone love, and that they
themselves receive; or that the men are loves, and themselves
obediences: they rejoice also in heart when the men believe it to be so.
There are several reasons why they endeavour to persuade the men of
this, which are all grounded in their prudence and circumspection;
respecting which, something shall be said in a future part of this work,
particularly in the chapter ON THE CAUSES OF COLDNESS, SEPARATIONS, AND
DIVORCES BETWEEN MARRIED PARTNERS. The reason why men receive from their
wives the inspiration or insinuation of love, is, because nothing of
conjugial love, or even of the love of the sex, is with the men, but
only with wives and females. That this is the case, has been clearly
shewn me in the spiritual world. I was once engaged in conversation
there on this subject; and the men, in consequence of a persuasion
infused from their wives, insisted that they loved and not the wives;
but that the wives received love from them. In order to settle the
dispute respecting this arcanum, all the females, married and unmarried,
were withdrawn from the men, and at the same time the sphere of the love
of the sex was removed with them. On the removal of this sphere, the men
were reduced to a very unusual state, such as they had never b