On the most basic level, there are three different stages that a regular relationship goes through. They are lust, attraction and commitment. Some relationships stop on the first stage, others reach the last stage. At each stage we will feel different emotions and behave differently and interestingly enough the reason for that is the chemicals in our brains.
Based on these chemicals we can almost precisely say how long it will take for each phase of love to last. For example lust, which is primarily based on a physical attraction, lives no longer than a few weeks or months. Attraction stage, which is a result of mutual understanding and love compatibility between the two people, usually lasts from a year and a half up to three years. Commitment accompanied by attachment can last a full lifetime.
This leads us to wonder how much control do we really have over our feelings, relationships, love and consequently our behavior, since it seems that chemicals are the ones controlling us. Are we just like machines – preprogrammed to love and act in a certain way and have no choice over when are our feelings are going to change and how we will behave in the process? Are all our emotions preprogrammed and there is no pa*sion and attraction beyond the three years?
The answer to this question is probably - yes, we are preprogrammed and we cannot change how we feel. However unlike machines we still have some power to choose to ignore our programs (instincts, reflexes, emotions, etc), but we would have to fight the battle of emotions and logic. Most often we would give in to our emotions and would betray our logic, especially when emotions are strong and tempting, just like love is. This means we would simply follow our programs (just like machines follow theirs). Ironically, people who do take the events in their own hands and use logic rather than feelings to make decisions, are compared to machines/robots.
The dependence on our emotions is big flaw in many situations – what if the things we feel are anger, hatred, then obviously giving in to these emotions would not lead us to doing anything productive and will probably lead us to making many mistakes which we will later regret. On the other hand giving in to the feelings of love is probably a good thing in most cases. As people we need to really have a strong sense of self control and only let ourselves act upon our feelings when they are based on love and positive emotions. As to whether we can or cannot stop our feelings – the answer is probably no, we cannot. This also means that when love goes away, there is nothing we can do to stop it, at least not in the short term, because it is just another chemical reaction in our head. All we can do is to be aware of this and when love really does go away we are left to choose between emotions and logic.