This teaching seems to apply even to those who look for a common religion in choosing a partner. The instability of merely romantic love is well known. We do not need to feel discouraged if we find motives that seem less than perfect involved in our love for someone else. If we are trying to look to the Lord to guide us, and if we shun evils against our partner as sins against the Lord, then the Lord will be able to replace our mediate affections with genuine ones in time. In the meantime, being friends with our married partner gives stability to our love.
Friendship is very important to the conjunction of minds.
Love which belongs to the spirit, and from the spirit to the body, is insinuated into the souls and minds of married partners together with friendship and confidence. Partners grow to have confidence in each other, and so to have a special kind of friendship, from religion in life, as when a wife trusts the spiritual-moral conscience of her husband. With those who are in love truly conjugial, conjunction of minds, and with it friendship and confidence, increases. They become more and more one flesh, spiritually. This conjunction increases as friendship conjoins itself to love.