In a message dated 96-01-11 Marie Schulte writes:

>The worst part of the abuse is the
>isolation from other sources of reality for long periods of time. They are
>often perceived as making a mountain out of a molehill while the abuser
looks
>calmly sane.
<snip>
>It is hard to be that articulate or direct when a large part of your abuse
has
>been to tell you how crazy and worthless you are. Battered women go back to
>the abuser because they see no other options. They can only make that choice
>by distorting reality in a way and denying how bad the abuse really is. When
>abuse seems normal, the rest of the world can seem pretty crazy.

Marie,
Thank You for your words of wisdom.
As someone who has "been there, done that", it's nice to know that someone
else out there understands.
My ex was a verbal, sexual abuser, and to the rest of the world lookes and
seemed like a nice guy.  He had all his friends and family convinced that I
was the one with the problems (made especially easy since I was suffering
from depression and was on Elavil).  He even managed to fake out my
therapist!  (who then told me I needed to be happy that I had such a great
boyfriend!  B--ch!)   He even had my now hubby convinced that I was really
dumb.  Imagine my hubbys surprise when he found out just how smart and
interesting I really was!
Again, Thanks!
Jay
She who managed to get off of the rollercoater of Hell and onto the path of
real, unconditional Love!
PS  This ex was the same jerl who pressured me into weaning my oldest son
early so he could have my breasts for himself.      (Never again.....)