Conjugial Love (Rogers) n. 247

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247. (11) Of these external reasons for coldness, a second is believing that conjugial love is no different from licentious love, only that the latter is forbidden by law, while the former is allowed. Reason clearly sees that this leads to coldness when it considers that licentious love is diametrically opposed to conjugial love. Consequently, when one believes that conjugial love is no different from licentious love, so that the two loves are regarded as the same in idea, then the wife is looked upon as a whore, and the marriage as something unclean. The man, too, is himself an adulterer - if not in body, nevertheless in spirit. It inevitably follows that between the man and "his woman," contempt, loathing, and aversion break out because of this, and thus intense coldness. For nothing harbors a coldness to marriage within it more than licentious love. And because it also goes off into coldness, it may not unjustifiably be called the very essence of coldness in marriage.


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