Dear Abby: Husband says marriage isn’t what he wanted

Dear Abby: Just months before our 30th wedding anniversary, my husband told me he doesn't love me and never wanted to marry me. I am beyond devastated. I feel I have wasted the best years of my life. We have two beautiful daughters who are my everything.

When he revealed this news to me, it turned my life upside down. I don't know how to process it or what to do. I have spent years begging him to be more affectionate and loving. I always assumed he just didn't know how to show love. It never crossed my mind that he has never loved me. I feel naive, betrayed and robbed.

- Hopeless in the Midwest

Dear Hopeless: When your husband handed you that “bouquet,” was he angry or inebriated? It is hard to believe that a man would stay married for 30 years to someone he didn't love and didn't want to marry in the first place. (Shotgun weddings are long out of style.)

Revisit that conversation with him, and if he tells you he meant what he said, you are justified in feeling the way you describe. The questions then become are you better with him or without him, and what are your legal rights in the state in which you and this man live. (Not referring to him as your “husband” was not an oversight.)