While most couples turn to lawyers or marriage counselors when infidelity is involved, a substantial number of people, especially married women in China are turning to an unusual service — mistress dispellers, to help them save their marriages.

In the video below, Yan Xi, a 28-year-old woman from Wuhan, China talks about how she runs a relationship counseling and mistress dispelling service, earning about a million yuan (aprroximately S$200,000) a year.

Professional relationship saving gurus like her specialise in ending extramarital affairs between married men and their lovers. Their services often involve elaborate planning and execution such as trailing targets, video recording and also "infiltrating" the lives of mistresses, gaining their trust and convincing them to leave the relationship.

The emerging industry reveals an increasingly affluent society that is grappling with changing social mores.

Here's 5 good reasons why the business is flourishing in China.

1. Mistresses are too commonplace

Surprise, surprise. Extramarital affairs grew more common as China's economy opened up in recent decades, giving men more means and opportunities to be unfaithful.

Apparently, there is more than one kind of mistresses. You can read about the difference here.

Nevertheless, these woman have become part of the trappings of success in China, where businessmen and government officials keep mistresses to signal social status,

A study by Renmin University researchers in Beijing had found that a whopping 95% of top Chinese government officials who were detained for corruption in 2012 had extramarital affairs; the downfall of 60% of those officials was linked to their mistress habits.

Meanwhile, there are also women in China who try to move up the social ladder by becoming mistresses. After all, being a mistress pays. A "kept woman" can get an allowance of 20,000 yuan ($4060) a month, an attractive sum given that the average monthly income in China is about 5,500 yuan.

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2. Prejudice against women

Catching the mistress was thought to be the wife’s burden.

Behind the rise of mistress dispeller services lies the assumption that the “other woman” is the sole party to blame.

Mistresses are perceived as greedy seductresses. And they're often called mean names such as "hu li jing" (fox spirit) or "xiao san" (little third party).

See the scene of a woman tackling her husband’s mistress.

Does this look like too much work? Fear not, there's the option of letting the professionals take over.

Marriage dispellers can achieve the same outcome of breaking up the mistresses and the straying spouse with none (or little) of the violence or awkwardness.

The desire to 'dispel' the mistress suggests that most clients view extramarital affairs -- a complex relationship problem -- as nothing more than female rivalry.

Turns out fierce female competition happens not only in Chinese palace drama.

3. The nouveau riche mindset that money can buy everything

It is apparent that China's economic emergence have taught its citizens the lesson that wealth is a very useful thing.

Rich and powerful men can afford mistresses. Affluent women can afford mistress-dispellers. Clients need to pay 30,000 yuan or above to hire such services.

Keeping your honey comes at a price. Is that why they say "no money no honey"?

4. Changing attitude towards sex

Especially sex outside wedlock.

Increased personal and financial freedoms have made affairs easier to manage.

A growing number of people find it acceptable to cheat on their married partners.

A poll by Peking University shows that an estimated 20% of the married population in china are engaged in extramarital affairs, reflecting a society that is increasingly liberal in sexual behaviour and relationships.

5. A sense of doing good

As aggressive as the title "dispellers" may sound, most of those in the profession believe that they are doing a good deed by fixing broken families. For example, the Reunion Company, a mistress dispelling service advertises that it has a track record of "salvaging love" 92% of the time.

Most clients don't use evidence of adultery acquired by mistress dispellers to divorce their partners. They seem to wish that the mistress could be and would be "dispelled" once and for all.

Misplaced optimism perhaps, but it is certainly fuelling the growth of such unconventional services.

Top photo from Getty Images