Love derives from two sources, biology and or psychology and operates just like as magnetism or gravity. The biological variety comes directly from dna acting thought hormones for the purposes of reproduction. The psychology variety (which also comes from dna) but acts though neurons for the purpose of preservation.
Both are valid forms and both essential to humans.
You will fall in love with a mate that is a suitable match with your evolved personality profile.(i.e. girlfriend boyfriend) for the purpose of reproduction. You will also fall in love with anything (not limited to just people) that generates extreme emotional comfort [mum, dad, special places, special outcomes (i.e. money even)]
Biological loves wains in step with your reproductive drive. Psychological love on the other hand can wax or wain depending of the strength of the external source in producing emotional comfort within us. (i.e. the more your pet provides you with pleasurable emotional experience the more you will grow to love your pet or anything or anyone else for that matter)
The only important thing to remember about psychological love is that WE determine the way we feel NOT others [that is why some people can still love their children or their parent no matter how badly they get treated by them because just like magnetism we at the emotional interface reverse the polarity of the negative into positive- to protect ourselves from negative out come (e.g. my mother/child does not love me = emotional hurt. Therefore we can reverse this to ‘they do love me they just don’t show it = I am loved by someone important to me = I am okay = emotional comfort)
So you can grow or let die or kill even, Psychological love when ever you want to but the news about the Biological love is not so good.
Well there you have it not such a big mystery- really