"Divorce and adultery were considered shameful, and the era was one of making do—the prevailing maxim was 'Cou he,' or 'Improvise together.'"

"People learned to be content with patched clothes, bland meals of leftovers, and serviceable if unromantic unions. But now, she said, economic progress had diversified people’s choices: 'Money buys options. Men with cash want upgrades in everything, wives included.' Turning her face away from me, the woman said quietly, almost to herself, 'Something I figured out recently is that, in my bones, I don’t respect him—not his character or treatment of others. I think that, deep down, he knows this.' I asked her why, in that case, she didn’t consider divorce, and she paused, brushing a finger across the rim of her sunglasses. 'You know, for a while, I also asked myself the same question,' she said. 'I realized it’s because I’ve sacrificed too much for this marriage. It’s like a house I’ve given my life to construct, but that effort is hardly felt by people on the outside. Then, one day, he decides he wants to kick me out because he feels like it—how can I let him?'"

From "China’s Mistress-Dispellers/How the economic boom and deep gender inequality have created a new industry," by Jiayang Fan in The New Yorker. In China, a mistress is called a "Little Third," and one can have a career as a "Mistress Dispeller."

And here's a quote from one mistress dispeller: "Marriage is like the process of learning to swim... It doesn’t matter how big or fancy your pool is, just like it doesn’t always matter how good your husband is. If you don’t know how to swim, you will drown in any case, and someone else who knows how to swim will get to enjoy the pool."