answer, I think, is that the Bible appreciates love more than we do, or at least, the Bible has a more relaxed attitude towards love and human sexuality
than the church has had historically. For let’s be honest: the historic church of Christ has not generally exhibited a very positive view of human sexuality over the ages!
My belief is that this has been largely due to our dualistic Greek philosophical heritage, where the body is divided from the spirit, and where all things physical are seen as
being unspiritual, most especially human sexual desire, which is a further hankering after the physical!
In this Greek understanding ‘chastity’ is equivalent to ‘purity’. Hence celibacy is extolled as a spiritual virtue. Sex is seen as a necessary evil, for the purpose of procreation.
As one early Christian leader put it, ‘the good thing about sex is that it produces more monks and nuns’.
At the risk of offending some of our Catholic brethren, I personally believe that this is the line of thought behind the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of the Mary!
If you follow the logic, Mary could only bear Jesus because she was ‘pure’, and her purity is seen as tied up with her virginity. As adoration of Mary grew over the ages, it
came to be seen as perpetually pure, and hence it followed that she must have continued to be a virgin, despite the fact that Jesus’ brothers and sisters are referenced in
the New Testament!
Indeed, if you follow Christian tradition, you will find that Mary’s mother, a woman supposedly named, ‘Anne’ herself came to be