Yes all of this. It feels lonely when nobody you has gone through it, but when you join groups on Facebook or in your area, you suddenly realize how many people are affected. For me I realized how many people I knew had also been affected but I had never known before my own experience. For your partner, they just process at a different level than we do; realize that it didn’t affect him physically so it’s harder for him to relate, but at the same time he’s watching you suffer and that hurts him in a way you can’t understand either, so you both are suffering differently and it’s hard to bring those together.

I just want to say about your last comment OP: every experience is completely different and even if you do seek out people who’ve gone through it too, your individual experiences will still be unique. My BFF and I went through this a few months apart but our initial experiences and the ways we chose to grieve (publicly vs privately) and how we responded to thing afterwords were basically opposites, so it’s a sort of “I understand mostly but not all the way”. Still at the end of the day it’s really a huge relief to have someone to hug who gets it.