True marriage love is a source of power and protection against the hells, as it is against the evils and falsities that ascend from the hells, and for the reason that through marriage love man has conjunction with the Lord, and the Lord alone has power over all the hells; also because through marriage love man has heaven and the church; consequently as the Lord unceasingly protects heaven and the church from the evils and falsities that rise up from the hells, so He protects all who are in true marriage love, because such and no others have heaven and the church.  For heaven and the church are a marriage of good and truth, from which is marriage love, as has been said above.  And this is why through marriage love man has peace, which is inmost joy of heart from a complete safety from the hells and a protection from infestations of the evil and falsity therefrom. (A.E., n. 999.)

Those who are in true marriage love, when after death they become angels, return to their early manhood and to youth, the males, however spent with age, becoming young men, and the wives, however spent with age, becoming maidens.  Each of the married pair returns to the flower and joy of the age when marriage love begins to exalt the life with new delights, and to inspire playfulness for the sake of prolification.  The man who while he lived in the world had shunned adulteries as sins, and who has been inaugurated by the Lord into marriage love, comes into this state first outwardly and afterward more and more interiorly to eternity.

As such continue to grow young more interiorly it follows that true marriage love continually increases and enters into its charms and satisfactions, which have been provided for it from the creation of the world, and which are the charms and satisfactions of the inmost heaven, arising from the love of the Lord for heaven and the church, and thus from the love of good for truth and truth for good, which loves are the source of every joy in the heavens.  Man thus grows young in heaven because he then enters into the marriage of good and truth; and in good there is the conatus [instinct] to love truth continually, and in truth there is the conatus [instinct] to love good continually; and then the wife is good in form and the husband is truth in form.  From that conatus [instinct] man puts off all the austerity, sadness, and dryness of old age, and puts on the liveliness, gladness, and freshness of youth, from which the conatus [instinct] becomes living and a joy.

I have been told from heaven that such then have the life of love, which cannot otherwise be described than as the life of joy itself.  That the man who lives in true marriage love in the world comes after death into the heavenly marriage, which is the marriage of good and truth springing from the marriage of the Lord with the church, is clearly evident from this, that from the marriages in the heavens, although the married pair have consociations there like those