affections of love, and thence interior
perceptions and thoughts. This is the origin of all sympathy and
antipathy, and likewise of all conjunction and disjunction, and,
according thereto, of presence and absence in the spiritual world: for
what is of a similar nature or concordant causes conjunction and
presence, and what is of a dissimilar nature and discordant causes
disjunction and absence; therefore those spheres cause distances in that
world. What effects those spiritual spheres produce in the natural
world, is also known to some. The inclinations of married partners
towards each other are from no other origin. They are united by
unanimous and concordant spheres, and disunited by adverse and
discordant spheres; for concordant spheres are delightful and grateful,
whereas discordant spheres are undelightful and ungrateful. I have been
informed by the angels, who are in a clear perception of those spheres,
that every part of a man, both interior and exterior, renews itself;
which is effected by solutions and reparations; and that hence arises
the sphere which continually issues forth. I have also been informed
that this sphere encompasses a man on the back and on the breast,
lightly on the back, but more densely on the breast, and that the sphere
issuing from the breast conjoins itself with the respiration; and that
this is the reason why two married partners, who are of different minds
and discordant affections, lie in bed back to back, and, on the other
hand, why those who agree in minds and affections, mutually turn towards
each other. I have been further informed by the angels, that these
spheres, because they flow from every part of a man (_homo_), and are
abundantly continued around him, conjoin and disjoin two married
partners not only externally, but also internally; and that hence come
all the differences and varieties of conjugial love. Lastly, I have been
informed, that the sphere of love, flowing from a wife who is tenderly
loved, is perceived in heaven as sweetly fragrant, by far more pleasant
than it is perceived in the world by a newly married man during the
first days after marriage. From these considerations is manifested the
truth of the assertion, that a wife is conjoined to a man by the sphere
of her life flowing from the love of him.

172. XIV. THE WIFE IS CONJOINED TO THE HUSBAND BY THE APPROPRIATION OF
THE POWERS OF HIS VIRTUE; WHICH HOWEVER IS EFFECTED ACCORDING TO THEIR
MUTUAL SPIRITUAL LOVE.