Ray's love for Martha makes sense for psychological reasons. But you have to keep in mind that both Ray and Martha have abnormal psychologies. First, shortly after their first meeting in Mobile, Martha goes to visit Ray in New York. We get that long camera pan across all of the photos of other lonely hearts women that Ray has apparently fleeced (and possibly even murdered). He asks her whether she still loves him, now that she knows everything about him. She says without hesitation that she does. She has no qualms about this. It is extremely attractive for a person, especially a person with secrets like Ray, to encounter a partner who sees your darkest secrets in exact detail -- and then still accepts you. Most people would either reject you or only accept you out of obtuseness, i.e., they aren't seeing how bad the real you is.
Second, I'd suspect that Ray has a very twisted and toxic mother complex, and Martha ties in with this. Many of Ray's victims are middle-aged or even elderly, that is, the age the character's mother would be if she were present in the film. Ray's fake 'suave' persona plays into female fantasies about what they wish men were like, while his real plans and desires go unnoticed. He's like a child with a strict, controlling, or emotionally abusive mother, who has learned to adapt by beguiling her with whatever nonsense she wants to hear. By lying and play-acting, he gets to be the "good boy" she claims she wants and is trying to mold. This gives him plausible deniability to do what he's going to do anyway, behind her back. The actions he does take with his victims indicate - among other things - a profound misogyny.
Martha's relationship with Ray has a number of maternal elements to it. In spite of her immature pouting and acting out, once the two of them get together, the head nurse in her assumes major responsibilities in Ray's life. Regarding their criminal activities, she often takes the initiative in stealing, lying, manipulating, and even murdering. Some of the crime victims even remark on this, and utter lines like, "You're more like a mother to him than a sister."
At the same time Ray feels a deep attraction to Martha, he is afraid of her, and this is remarked on in the film. The obverse is not true. Martha is passionately in love with Ray, but she is never afraid of him, only that he might leave or betray her. Her lack of fear may even be related to her size - she is larger than him physically, and in spite of his physical fitness, it's a toss-up whether he'd prevail in a physical fight with her.
But his fear of her doesn't really stem from her physicality, but from what it represents: the overpowering, oceanic might of her out-of-control, insane emotions, which at any given moment might erupt into madness and violence. Her passions are so excessive, so selfish, and so instantly self-justified by her that she is a frightful figure indeed. Certainly, this is part of what the little girl who rejects her "senses" - the evil of selfish emotion that is unchecked and rationalized. To Ray, Martha is fearsome, perhaps even as fearsome as the first woman who, I'd guess, terrorized him: his own mother. The ideal, forgiving, indulgent mother and the selfish, terrible mother inhabit the same person, Martha, and this must exert a powerful magnetic force on Ray.
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