The LW seems to be married to a clone of my ex-wife. There is not much I can add that other people have not said already, except to say that I don't think the marriage can ever be repaired and that that the LW should divorce her and take steps to ensure his own physical safety.

The fact that his wife served in two wars several years apart and is now severely mentally impaired is a reminder of the immense human cost of foreign wars. Post traumatic syndrome used to be known as shell-shock in the wars of the earlier twentieth century, and many men (now women) suffered permanent impairment from the mental after effects of seeing their friends and cohorts blown to pieces, feeling guilty about surviving etc.

The fact that the first of these wars was more than a decade ago strongly suggests that her prospects for recovery are poor.

Maybe she can recover through therapy, but I am not so sure that the morbid jealousy (Othello syndrome) is caused by the effects of war. My ex wife was that way, though fairly sane in other respects and it always seemed to me that the absurd accusations were more a way of trying to exert control over my life than anything else. For example, if I was accused of having gay sex with male friends in the bushes when I went marathon training with them, then the only way to reassure her was to not go.

... I don't think that as an advice columnist, when a man writes in about a problem with his wife, you can actually say: "Well dump the bitch!".

There is something in the agony auntie rulebook that says you have to take the LW where they are and see what kind of advice they are looking for. If I imagine myself in the situation described, then dump the bitch is what immediately comes to mind, but then the LW is not me. He married this woman apparently knowing that she had a history of mental health disorders related to her military service. Maybe he is also a vulnerable, lonely person who is not much of a catch and wants to try to save this marriage.

Certainly if he showed up at the office of a professional counsellor, it is almost guaranteed that he would NOT be told to dump the crazy bitch.

Of course one of the advantages of an online column with add-on reader responses is that you do get a wide range of uninhibited comment and opinion based on a wide range of experiences. You pays your money and you takes your choice, except that it is free.

I had one who put his fist through a wall he was so frustrated from one of our fights. None of them were "abusers.

Sorree, this is a learned behavior that people do for effect and sympathy. In the both of the countries I lived in for many years before I came to the USA, this behavior was unknown, probably because interior walls were usually solidly constructed out of brick or block faced with stucco.

In the US many homes have walls of wood frame construction faced with drywall panels and covered with a coat of texture and paint. A well executed punch will make a hole in such a wall without causing much injury to the puncher, provided that he avoids hitting a stud (vertical timber).

This behaviour is extremely common (more than one of my tenants have done it when rowing with a female partner) and is designed to get sympathy later from the female partner (oh, your poor handy-pandy) or to equalize damage (well, I'm hurt too, your eye, my hand). The person who does it has nearly always done it before, or seen someone do it. This is NOT a spontaneous reaction to stress. Our ancestors did not break their hands punching trees or walls of their caves.

You know, it is strange. The ads surrounding where I am typing this riposte are all about cruises and mortgages. You would think they would be more context sensitive and be for:

THERACHEAP!!! Your resource for discount therapy referrals. Special Sale this menstrual period only!! Asperger's Autism only $99.99. Thanksgiving Family Dinner Preanxiety groups in your area.

SoulMateFinder Marriage Bureau. Somewhere, probably over the rainbow, your handpicked, sensitive, fully house-trained mate is waiting for you. Sign up now. All genders and transgenders welcome.

I looked in Google images, but didn't come up with anything on a goose's anus. There were plenty of pictures of geese, but for some reason none were taken from the rear.

But I wondered if it were not possible that a goose's anus was something like a duck's ass, actually a type of hairstyle, and it may just be that the phrase just refers to the lips protruding from the face in an unnatural or cartoonish way like a goose's or duck's tail.

The purpose, of course, of plumping up the lips, just like wearing lipstick, or dark stuff around the eyes, is to mimic sexual arousal. It is the equivalent of rump display in orang-utangs,and no red-blooded American woman is going to be outdone by a tree-swinging primate.

American men are particularly interested in large breasts, and many women have surgery to make their tits bigger, though to me these enhanced globules usually look awful (and cartoonish).

American male politicians and TV preachers also go in for a bizarre form of display in the wearing of towering tinted hairpieces that make them look like the male of some species of crested waterfowl. Mitt Romney seems to be an example.

So I am sure that to the anthropological eye of your average Parsee, we Americans must look rather odd.

And vice versa.