Limerance is a sense of mystery and wonder about another person, for whom one feels both desire, and the beginnings of love and friendship. Within it, there is limited information about the nature of the other person as yet, and we tend to voluntarily "project" our ideals, dreams and fantasies onto the other person, ignoring, or not knowing of their flaws.

This is the psychological term that is the closest to the everyday expression, "falling in love," and is distinct from a longer-term sense of love as having duties and obligations in a friendship. This lack of work and effort also makes it easier to misconstrue limerance as verifying that we have personality compatibility or character compatibility, both of which take quite a bit more effort and analysis of experiences with the other person, to be certain of. As such, it can be one of the most powerful romantic feelings that we are a part of, because it is easy to idealize a state of being in which there is minimal effort needed.

Most mature people submit to limerance and understand on some level that it is a temporary and fantasied experience from which one eventually "wakes up." However, it serves as a bridge to cross from just feeling attraction and desire, to the actual efforts (and mundane nature) of living a life together.

From the dictionary, the term means, "the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one's feelings but not primarily for a sexual relationship."

It is in the lack of primacy of having a sexual relationship that there is evidence of us crossing into love and friendship from desire that starts things off, romantically. And so it also explains the terms, "puppy love," and "wanting to cuddle."

It is then a feature of psychology that has relevance to both the Sexual Attraction Phase and Emotional Attraction Phase of courtship, between Step 3 of courtship and Step 4 of courtship.