Hi iamstrong, like you and Mamazon I am a survivor of a domesticaly violent relationship. I work in the field too (although, I work with adult survivors of rape and sexal abuse, which is slightly broader). Unlike you iamstrong I took my abuser back many, many times. Here is my personal experience of that, in case you perhaps see some paralells.
I had a child with him, so I had to see him regularly for contact. Most of the time I was strong and knew I didn't need him, but there were times I was weak and I begged him to take me back. In hindsight I think I had ignored that he hurt me, he humilliated me and he controlled me. I had gone down the very typical "but he wasn't all bad" way of justifying it to myself, and he wasn't... That's why he was so hard to get away from.
I I felt I just needed him. Without him I felt lost and pathetic and like I needed someone to guide me. I did not trust my own decisions, even small decisions like if I ought to be wearing a jumper today or not. I second guessed everything I thought or felt. It was only a long time later that I realised that I felt like this because he had systematically destroyed my confidence in my decsion making abilities. Even eventually my ability to own my own body.
I stopped going back to him in the end, but if I am brutally honest I am not sure if that's because I became clearer in my own mind what was going on, or because he no longer wanted me as a victim. Maybe it was a combination of both.
Probably one of the most astounding aspects of that relationship was what happened when I actually called the police. Like Mamazon I was young, tall and attractive enough to have done a little modelling. You don't think of strapping gert lassies (well over 6 foot) as being victims. I didn't see myself as the victim type, but he DID hit me, he would pin me up against walls by my throat, it was kind of his signature. So on two occasions I called the police, I told them what had happened and they removed him from the property. The police told me that they had given him a formal warning, now this is the stunning bit, he told me they were lying about the formal warning to placate me and that the police had told him that I was enough to drive anyone to violence and that to tell me if I did it again they would arrest me. I'm far from an idiot, but do you know what, I believed him. I believed him for over a decade actually. I have just had to do a very enhanced record disclosure for something and there, in black and white on the page, is that he was warned twice for assaulting me. The third time he was warned he would have been charged and punished, no wonder he put so much effort into convincing me that calling the police was futile.
I differ from Mamazon in that I have had counselling, or to be more specific psychotherapy. When I found out he was abusing our then six year old daughter it blew my world to peices. I was eventually diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, 50% of single rape survivors and 75% of multiple rape survivors will have some symptoms of PTSD. I had always thought it was just me he had a problem with too. That I was in some way repsonsible. But then I would think that if you look at it carefully...
As I said before he systematically destroyed any faith I ever had in my own ability to do anything right. He was not the most violent of abusers, he never broke any of my bones, he never even left me with particularly identifiable marks. What he did though was called into question everything I ever did, or thought, or chose and made me doubt it. At first, like most DV victims, I thought he was angry about the issue at hand. It took me quite a while to see that he was angry, the issue at hand just gave him the cover to let it out. It was wrong when I wore a skirt to work in the pub (because I might get the attention of other men), but it was also wrong when I wore trousers because I was "clearly doing it to mock" him. I had 3 jobs, I worked a 72 hour week. He had one, a 30 hour week. In hindsight why did I not question why I had to let him control the household budgets? I didn't though. Because he had destroyed my faith in my own mind. It started with small things like trousers, then gradually escalated to the slightly surreal like the mornings over breakfast when I would be dazed and tramatised from the rape the night before and he'd say "what's the matter Dear". At first I would incredulously stammer "you, you, you hurt me" and he would appologise lavishly and look all concerned and swear that if I had only said no he would have stopped. I screamed no most of the time at first, I kicked, I fought back. It made no difference, he would roll me face down and pin my arms. I learned quickly that face down is worse, there are more painful palces he could find to stick it if I were face down and eventually I stopped fighting. I may have been working as a park ranger felling 30 foot trees without a chainsaw during the day, but this man, with all his anger, was much stronger. I realised in the end that the morning affection was nothing more than a way of getting me to doubt myself. But if I didn't show the right affection and neediness in the morning then the next night would be worse. He was doing a lot of that, changing one thing or another to get me to doubt myself, the term for it is Gaslighting (after a play).
Because of what he did to my confidence and self esteem I did feel lost without him. I did not feel like this confident capable young woman I was projecting to the world, I felt secretly useless. Pathetic, in need of a master I suppose, albeit in a less dramatic way. When he treated me with disdain on the doorstep the old reactions kicked in or being deserate to please him. I practically begged him to take me back. It is emabarrassing thinking back.
I thought for years that it wasn't real Domestic Violence. I felt somehow that DV was measured in the severity of the womans injuries and the meekness of her character (meek has never been me). So if she was a timid little librarian and the big bad boyfriend put her in intensive care then THAT was real DV. His hand round my throat a few times and his inability to hear "no" in the bedroom wasn't the same I thought. If I didn't have injuries to show for it then it wasn't domestic violence. But it was.
I think you might find a few bits of that you relate to and I hope if you do I have added enough explaination of why those thought processes occur. I could go on but his post is too long already.
On a side note, that book someone already mentioned, Why Does He Do It by Lundy Bancroft is an excellent choice. Also slightly on a side note both Rape Crisis or Womens Aid will be able to help refer you to counselling and it can be a revelation in understanding those parts of your own reactions that confuse you. You will, hopefully, find it enlightening.