From the felicities of marriages a conclusion may be drawn respecting the infelicities of adulteries, namely, that the love of adultery is the fundamental love of all infernal loves, which are in themselves not loves, but hatreds, consequently from the love of adultery hatreds of every kind gush forth, both against God and against the neighbor, and in general against every good and truth of heaven and the church; therefore to it all infelicities belong, for, as has been said before, from adulteries man becomes a form of hell, and from the love of adulteries he becomes an image of the devil.  That from the marriages in which there is true marriage love all delights and felicities increase even till they become the delights and felicities of the inmost heaven, and that all that is undelightful and unhappy in the marriages in which love of adultery reigns increases in direfulness even to the lowest hell, can be seen in the work on Heaven and Hell (n. 386). (A.E., n. 993.)

True marriage love is from the Lord alone.  It is from the Lord alone because it descends from the Lord’s love for heaven and the church, and thus from the love of good and truth; for good is from the Lord, and truth is in heaven and the church; and from this it follows that true marriage love in its first essence is love to the Lord.  And from this it is that no one can be in true marriage love and in its pleasantnesses, delights, blessings, and joys, unless he acknowledges the Lord alone, that is, that the trinity is in Him.  One who approaches the Father as a person by Himself, or the Holy Spirit as a person by Himself, and not these as in the Lord, can have no marriage love.

The genuine conjugal principle is given especially in the third heaven, because the angels there are in love to the Lord and acknowledge Him alone as God, and do His commandments.  To them doing the commandments is loving the Lord.  To them the Lord’s commandments are the truths in which they receive Him.  There is conjunction of the Lord with them, and of them with the Lord; for they are in the Lord because they are in good, and the Lord is in them because they are in truths.  This is the heavenly marriage, from which true marriage love descends. (A.E., n. 995.)

As true marriage love in its first essence is love to the Lord from the Lord it is also innocence.  Innocence is loving the Lord as one’s Father by doing His commandments and wishing to be led by Him and not by oneself, thus like a little child.  As that love is innocence, it is the very being (esse) of all good; and therefore man has so much of heaven in himself, or he is so much in heaven, as he is in marriage love, because he is so far in innocence.  It is because true marriage love is innocence that the playfulness between a married pair is like the play of little children; and this is so in the measure in which they love each other, as is evident in the case of all in the first days after the nuptials, when their love emulates true marriage love.  The innocence of marriage love is meant in the Word by the “nakedness” at which Adam and his wife blushed not; and for the reason that there is nothing of lasciviousness, and thus nothing of shame, between a married pair, any more than between little children when they are naked together. (A.E., n. 996.)