Validity of limerance as a romantic evolutionary stage I was looking into the concept of limerence as a stage of evolution in a romantic relationship, however I can't find any sources for it other than its origin in the book "Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love" by Dorothy Tennov. Has there been any criticism of this as a concept, not as diagnosis for abnormal psychology? I'm somewhat skeptical of any psychological concept put forth by a single part without external validation.
The theme of love is and will be a very broad subject in psychology. As on other occasions I have always focused on variables to take into account in this theme: attachment, attraction, sexual behavior, esthetics (philosophical theme), likes, interests, etc (as always keep in mind also that there may always be more variables than those considered).

In broad themes:


Certain facts can be studied as phenomena.
A set of facts about a phenomenon can be established in a construct in a theory (here it is not so much about terms or concepts) these constructs have different realities (reality as individual mental state, reality through the influence that causes In the social or interpersonal domain), can not be directly observed, its characteristics must be studied through other objects.
In many cases it is difficult to limit the construct due to its limits, for example other processes or even other social phenomena (for example, how to determine the limit of the stereotype construct in any investigation).


Addressing the issue of validity in a broad sense (beyond validity in psychometry) (epistemological validity) can refer to many things, to perform a certain analysis, to apply a methodology, a hypothesis, an experiment, at in the end can be understood as the correct scientific procedure.

The term limerance has validity in that it is a concept that refers to a construct whose effects are registered by an investigator and seem to be found other sources that handle it (it is not strictly necessary for the construct to be labeled in this way in other sources , It does not matter as much the sources as the methodological validity of the scientific process, in any case if that seems to be a construct that other investigators handle)

Further reading:


"Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process", Hazan, Cindy; Shaver, Phillip(DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.52.3.511)
"Attachment Style as a Predictor of Adult Romantic Relationships", Judith A. Feeney, Patricia Noller(DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.58.2.281)
"Romantic love: An fMRI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice", Helen Fisher, Arthur Aron, Lucy L. Brown(DOI: 10.1002/cne.20772)