People line up at the divorce registration office in Shanghai's Xuhui district last month. Zhang Ruiqi / For China Daily
Extramarital affairs
The majority of counselors believe that extramarital affairs are the most common problem among couples.
Shu Xin, director of the Weiqing Group, an agency based in Shanghai that provides counseling services in more than 40 cities nationwide, said that roughly 80 percent of his clients sought help after discovering that their partner had had an affair. When Shu established the agency in 2001, the number of people seeking advice was between 10 and 20 a day, but the figure has now soared to more than 200.
Improved transportation and the development and rapid spread of communications platforms means it is easier than ever to have an affair, according to counselors, who believe the frequent exposure of related behavior by well-known figures in the entertainment industry is making the public less confident about marriage.
In mid-August, movie star Wang Baoqiang filed for divorce on the grounds that his wife was having an affair with his agent. Meanwhile, 10 days later, rumors spread online that the wife of Zhang Jizhong, one of China's most prominent television producers, was sexually involved with his godson, movie director Xiao Qi, even though no evidence had been produced and neither party had commented publicly about the situation.
Lin Zi, vice-chairman of the Shanghai Psychological Counseling Association, partly attributed the high incidence of extramarital affairs to the public's "excessive focus" on the pursuit of wealth in the past two decades as China's economy boomed.
"After working hard all day, people don't want to talk much at home. That may lead to anxiety and suspicion among partners and growing conflict between them if the situation persists. When a person has low satisfaction in their family life, they want to make up for it in other ways," she said.
However, when someone who has cheated on their spouse opts for professional advice, the counselor will not necessarily drag them back to the family. Instead, they will observe and assess the client's real needs.
"Everybody needs to feel safe, valued, intimate and stable in a relationship. I help them to compare the two options to see which better satisfies their needs. The costs, both financial and emotional, are much lower," Shi said.
Dealing with differences
The lack of an appropriate way of dealing with differences between couples is another major problem, according to counselors, who said every person has different needs and an important task in marriage is to seek common ground while putting aside minor differences and disagreements.
Moreover, every couple copes with differences in their own way, so counselors prefer both partners to participate in the sessions so they can see how they talk with each other and help them to improve their communication skills.
Lin said she often asks a couple to swap roles and explain how their other half usually responds to certain situations. Then they articulate what they really expect their other half to say in such circumstances.
"Through this process, they often find that what they are used to saying actually hurts their spouse a lot, and that such communication is ineffective and aggravates the problem," she said.
In Lin's experience, the role-playing process reveals to the couple that problems mostly arise from differences in personality, but that doesn't mean their love has come to an end - a common perception when marital tensions surface.
"We listen to their stories of the environment and family they grew up in, and discover where their behavior originated," Shi said. As an example, he explained that he has often noticed that men who say little in times of conflict usually grew up with quarrelsome parents where the father avoided engaging with the issue by remaining silent.
"The role-playing process allows the wife to understand that her husband's silence doesn't mean 'he doesn't love me anymore' or 'he doesn't care about our family'. He was taught to cope with conflict in this way by what he saw and heard during childhood," he said.
"Through counseling, we want to intensify such awareness, so people enter marriage with all their experiences, background and history fully known, which will help them better understand their partner and their relationship so they will learn to treat their partner in the way that person prefers."
