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‘Loyalty test’ turns into break-up service
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ANGELA Chen recently broke up with her boyfriend, and she literally “bought” the consequences.
The Shanghai-native university student had been with her boyfriend for two years, but recently felt that they were not as passionate as before.
“I often go to tianya.com (the biggest online community in China) to read girls’ gossips,” says Chen. “From there I read about a service of ‘testing the loyalty of your boyfriend,’ and I was intrigued.”
The service, mostly sold on Taobao, China’s largest e-commerce platform, has become a heated topic recently. A search for “professional loyalty test” on the website reveals nearly 90 stores selling the service. They have eye-catching names such as “Douche Boyfriend Killer.”
And the sad truth is that, out of hundreds of transactions, nearly as many end up as break-ups.
Chen bought the service despite seeing all the sad stories in the comments.
“I didn’t really want to know if he was loyal to me or not,” says Chen. “I just wanted to ask him something that I couldn’t ask in person, and I was wondering if a stranger could coax his real thoughts out.”
The online store’s service is quite good, according to Chen. The woman with the store asked a lot of questions about her boyfriend and designed a detailed plan. Then she added the boyfriend on WeChat as a stranger.
The price of the service is 30 yuan (US$4.80) if the boyfriend is proved to be “faithful” or 100 yuan if not.
The result was out of Chen’s expectation. She never suspected her boyfriend had heard about such a “test” and would see through the scam soon after the “customer service” started to talk to him.
“No matter how much she pretended to be a fellow student at our college, he wouldn’t believe her, and eventually asked her to show her campus card,” says Chen. “And of course the whole thing was busted.”
Chen says her boyfriend dumped her immediately and told her that he was thinking of breaking up for a while but couldn’t make up his mind, and what she did was “the last straw.”
“I literally spent 100 yuan breaking up with my boyfriend,” says Chen. “I don’t know what to do now.”
Chen is far from the only heartbroken woman after buying the service. An owner of a testing store, whose screen name is Chang Taiqing, says her store transacted more than 120 cases during the past few months, 90 percent of which ended with a sad story.
“It seemed that most men would be attracted by our customer service,” she says.
Chang says Chen just wanted to confirm if her boyfriend still loved her, but there were women, most of them under 25, who really wanted to know if their boyfriends would be led into temptation.
The testing stores use mostly college students who want to make money. The “service girls” role-play a caring, sweet girl online who shows affection to the man.
“Our girls give a morning call, good-night kiss and leisure talks, of course all in a very tender tone,” says Chang. “The only rule is that no matter what happens, they are not allowed to meet the men offline.”
Chang says the result was quite surprising. “About 90 percent of the men seemed not to be able to resist such girls,” she says. “There was even a man who insisted on breaking up with his girlfriend and confessing his love to the customer service girl.”
In the comment column of Chang’s store, nearly 20 women wrote down their feelings after booking the service, and most of them chose to be anonymous.
“I very much appreciate the efforts of the customer service,” wrote a woman. “They made me see through my boyfriend and he is just a douchebag. I’m ready to end the relationship.”
Another customer said the test presented her with a dilemma.
“The current situation is like a thorn in my flesh,” she wrote. “I don’t know if I should bear it for life or to take it out with great pain.”
Psychologists point out that the test is not scientific and does nothing good to a relationship.
Wang Huilin, a therapist with the Shanghai Soul Garden Counseling Center, says that a healthy relationship is always built upon mutual respect and trust.
“When one wants to test the partner, it means that subconsciously she or he feels that there are problems in the relationship,” she explains. “The real solution is to communicate directly with the partner, rather than testing if they’re loyal.”
Wang says even if the test shows that the man is not fascinated by a strange woman, it does not mean the relationship is smooth anyway.
“The problem is that the test itself would be barrier for the relationship in the future,” she notes. “The woman may feel guilty for not trusting her partner, while the man, once he learns about the test, may feel betrayed.”
According to legal experts, since such activity is not illegal, it’s hard to regulate the online services online.
“In civil law, it mentions a principle of ‘public order and morals’,” says Chen Fengfeng, a lawyer with the Yingji Law Firm in Shanghai. “Such service of course tramps social norms and morality, but does not break the law.”
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