Familiarity due to continual indulgence is an accidental reason for coldness, because it is what happens to those whose thoughts about marriage and their wives are lascivious, but not to those who have a holy respect for marriage and confidence in their wives. Familiarity due to continual indulgence also causes joys to become matters of indifference and even boring, as is obvious from games and shows, musical concerts, dances, feasts and such like; these are essentially sweet, because they enliven our lives. It is much the same with married couples living and sleeping together, especially in the case of those who have failed to banish unchaste sexual love from their love for each other, and when they think about the familiarity due to continual indulgence, but to no purpose in the absence of opportunity. It is self-evident that these people find that familiarity is a reason for coldness.

This is called accidental, because it is an additional cause for inherent coldness, and supports it as providing a motive. In order to get rid of the coldness this causes, wives have the innate prudence to prevent excessive indulgence by various expressions of repugnance. But it is utterly different in the case of those whose judgment of their wives is chaste. Among the angels therefore familiarity from continual indulgence is the height of the soul's delight, serving as a vehicle for their conjugial love. For they enjoy the pleasure of that love continually, and the extreme pleasures in so far as their minds are not distracted from attention by worries, and so as their husband's judgment dictates.