Married Chinese Couples Hire "Mistress Dispellers" to Save Their Relationships

As of October 2025, a rising new professional service in China is offering an innovative solution for aggrieved wives of cheating husbands. Unlike the confrontational drudgery of couples therapy or the finality of divorce, this approach relies on subterfuge. Women of means can hire a "mistress dispeller" to infiltrate their partner's affair, befriend the "other woman" without revealing their connection to the wife, and convince her to end the relationship.

This kind of marital embedding involves a whole lot of acting, as the documentary "Mistress Dispeller" reveals. The film follows the work of one such dispeller, Wang Zhenxi, as she navigates the intricate web of deception and truth that unfolds in these quadrangular dramas. Alongside the central triangle of the wife, husband, and mistress, Wang plays a crucial role-playing part, posing as a friend of the wife to gain the trust of the husband and his lover.

The documentary also delves into the personal lives of the Lis, a married couple in Luoyang, central China, who initially agreed to participate in a project about modern love. Onscreen, they present a picture of marital disaffection, with the husband, Mr. Li, torn between his wife and his newfound mistress, Fei Fei. The intertwining layers of performance, not only by the dispeller but by the husband and wife as well, become dizzying, if not quite labyrinthine.