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

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."

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.

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.

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?

> 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.

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.

.

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.

This is the logical conclusion if you don't understand another country and solely base your analysis on data.

All you said in regards to male/female ratio is true, and single women have lots potential mates to choose from.

Unfortunately, the mistress situation is still common, due to a variety of issues around limited supply of wealthy men, divorce laws favouring the wealthy, societal stigma against divorced people, social norm of judging men by success and women by look, etc, etc.

Not all those issues are female-centric, but combined, they make it acceptable (while still looked down upon, if advertised) for some women to be a mistress of some powerful man, and powerful men to have mistresses.

You are in fact very right, but there is one critical issue here. If we are talking about marriage. Culturally there is a "lifespan" of value to both genders. A Man's valuable lifespan can be well over 20 years, from age 20 all the way to age 40.While a woman's valuable lifespan maybe only less than 10 years, from 20 to 30.

This is because of the "stake" people are seeking when looking for a marriage between genders. Women are seeking wealth, social status, personality and whatever it may take to maintain a stable marriage ( family). While men, in most cases, are looking for prettiness, good-looking or whatever superficial. This kind of value lifespan and marriage purpose mismatch is the whole problem of marriage issues in China.

A divorced, less pretty (compare to those in 20s), mid-aged woman is very hard to find another marriage. Even if they did not even marry before, it is still hard for them. A lot of women in China who are well-educated, well-paid, in their 30s still have problems in finding partners (This is what Chinese society called sheng nu, or "women that left behind":https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheng_nu).

Statistically speaking, women are indeed more than men, but the mating process is not statistic.

it's not that simple. in china's current materialistic society you have a small pool of rich men with a lot of woman chasing after them. the majority of rich businessman do in fact have mistresses and their wives do take drastic measures to get them back.

The culture of a place plays much more important role that mere ratios of men/women.

Besides, it's not like this is for the general population. Mistresses are a common trait in the upper classes -- which, in a huge place like China, are still in the tens of millions...

> China female/male ratio is heavily unbalanced. There is a LOT men on market for women to choose.

The ratio of females to males that women actually want is balanced the other way. And it's that way pretty much everywhere in the world.

A f/m << 1 just means there are more men to settle for, not really to choose.

while the skewed sex ratio is true, lumping all of China together is misleading. The sex ratio is quite balanced in cities, for example, meaning that women living in cities don't quite enjoy the advantage.

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

By the way what is that movie's actual name? I haven't been able to find it on imdb, rotten tomatoes, etc.

According to the article, this is mostly men who are trying to status-signal by having a mistress; it's not Average Joe who's keeping a mistress on the side.

Men are not fungible.

But how many of these men are actually desirable by the women?

The services in the article cost upwards of $10k which means the woman in this case might be married to a rich high status man, which is arguably difficult to come by.

If you are a women age 28 married to a high status man for say six years, you probably want to keep that man instead of trying to find another one.