God gave us a mitzva that serves to create a true and lasting connection between a man and his wife: “[The newly married husband] shall be free for his house for one year” (Deuteronomy 24:5). During the entire first year of marriage the husband and wife are not to be apart for any extended time. This enables him to get used to living exclusively with her.

One of the reasons for this commandment [of being “free for his house one year”] is that when God, blessed be He, thought about creating the world, He wanted it to be populated with good creatures, born of male and female, that would mate in a proper way – for He considers licentiousness abominable. He therefore decreed for us, the nation that He chose to associate with His name, that each man should live with the wife who is uniquely his and with whom he will have children for the entire first year of marriage, without interruption. The result of this will be that being with her will feel natural, and his attention will be drawn to her, causing her appearance and actions to enter his heart, until the actions of any other woman will naturally feel strange. For most people, by nature, will seek out and love that with which they are familiar. Through fulfilling this mitzva he will distance himself from other women and focus on his own wife. (Sefer HaĤinnukh, Mitzva 582)