from Hacker News

China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’

by credo on 7/30/16, 12:47 PM with 92 comments

• by ripitrust on 7/30/16, 2:08 PM

  I doubt that this will ever work in countries other than China because women (and marriage) in other countries are mostly protected by law, while in china, women are not so well protected. Also, culturally speaking, a divorced woman is very hard to get marriage in China. While a divorced man is easy. In society, People think that "divorce" somehow depreciated the value of a woman, while "divorce" means nothing (sometimes positive thing) for a man. Also, after marriage, Chinese woman will not focus mostly on work or career promotion but rather on family, so in the long term, they are 1) financially attached to the husband 2) emotionally attached to the husband. This makes them want to "fix" the marriage rather than abandon it, even if the fix is superficial and (maybe) temporary.

  But as more and more young women (born after 80s and 90s) are married, this kind of issue may be mitigating. Because young women tend to be much well-educated and wealthy

• by sanxiyn on 7/30/16, 1:19 PM

  The key paragraph, in my opinion:

  "One response to marital infidelity is divorce. But divorce can be costly, especially for women. Aside from the social stigma that falls more heavily on women, family property and finances in China tend to be registered in the husband's name. A divorced woman can find herself homeless, adding to the pressure of taking measures to save the marriage."

• by shubhamjain on 7/30/16, 3:11 PM

  Another point that is missing here is, in many cultures, women are reluctant to consider any fault in their husbands. Cheating? Fault of the mistress. Domestic violence? Fault of herself. Coming from India, I have seen this happening countless times where women would never see anything wrong with their spouse even in worst cases.

  This may seem horrifying but it is often a result when women are brought up to be good obeying wives, be great mothers and religiously do household duties.

• by rdslw on 7/30/16, 1:48 PM

  Hard to believe this is something more than 'wannabe business PR' plus movie PR.

  China female/male ratio is heavily unbalanced. There is a LOT men on market for women to choose. Also almost no foreign woman marry chinese man, on the contrary to the chinese women marrying a lot of foreigners.

  1+2 means china is a market where men are at bad position and women has plenty of fish to choose from. Opposite situation which would create such services as described in the article.

  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women_of_China

  According to 2012 figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s sex ratio at birth (the number of boys born for every 100 girls) was as high as 118.

• by Illniyar on 7/30/16, 1:26 PM

  What's the point though? Wouldn't the husband just end up with a different mistress?

  I mean they do not resolve the problems in the marriage that led to the situation. Do these women believe it's a one time thing? or that that specific mistress is special?

• by matt_wulfeck on 7/30/16, 3:08 PM

  > Weiqing eventually ended the affair, she said, by persuading the other woman to take a higher-paying job in another city. “I don’t care how that woman is living now,’’ Ms. Wang said. “I just feel relieved that my husband is back.’’

  This makes me sad because the issue is not "fixed", it's just lost one of its symptoms.

  If you speak to enough people who have been married for a "long time" you realize they have been through some really hard stuff. It takes an extreme amount of work and forgiveness from both sides. I can't picture success with just one party being interested in staying together.

• by sverige on 7/30/16, 1:15 PM

  But how will this work in, say, LA or New York? A friend of mine in NYC had a lovely wife who divorced him after discovering his serial philandering. He said there were young women throwing themselves at him all the time. (He's wealthy.)

  The stigma isn't as strong here as it is in China, either. And he ended up paying for the divorce.

  On the other hand, she's not as well off financially as she had been. It was emotionally difficult for her as well, but the root of that problem was deeper than the symptom.

  Not sure that this service would work here.

• by jogofogo on 7/30/16, 1:36 PM

  .

• by kazinator on 7/30/16, 3:49 PM

  Laugh; "mistress disspelling" is a time-consuming and expensive remedy which focuses on the symptom of the infidelity. After weeks and months of manipulating the mistress, assuming it works, the husband may just find another one. Back to square one.

  What if he already has several? Do you hire three counsellors with three strategies to dispel all of them? That's going to get really expensive, fast.