not having a support system

[HerMajesty]

Anne My husband (whose reaction I described above) is a "truly loving partner" and it sounds from your description like yours probably is too. They are just ill equipped to give us whatever we feel that we need. Interesting about the painting, my husband responded SO well when I started working part time again even though it doesn't bring in significant income - it just meant a lot to him that I was doing something, he was "proud of me", which is strange because it is easier to feel better and to work than to feel so bad you sit home and do nothing. But they don't see it that way: The thing that is actually easier is what makes them proud of us because it produces something they can see.
I am really responding because you used that phrase "truly loving", and while some partners are able to cope and navigate emotionally complex situations better than others, most of us have partners that truly love us. I am hoping you will not be bitter and hold it against him, that he is not "Little House on The Prarie" by which you MUST mean the TV show. The books were starkly realistic nonfiction, including the fact that when one of the sisters, Mary, went blind from scarlet fever, they shipped her off to a blind school and she is mentioned once in the remainder of the book series when they went to visit her. So that is how they really dealt with a disabled family member in "Little House on the Prarie", minus Michael Landon in TV fantasyland.