So I currently have an apartment building where I've got four different households living there. They all know each other and are friends and blah blah blah. I've never really played apartments much before so I was surprised when I saw how much time all my neighbors spend outside talking to each other. Eventually, while I was watching my sims neighbors all interact, the inevitable happened and a couple sims flirted and fell in love. I thought it was kind of cute until I loaded those people and found out that it actually kept them as in love even though I wasn't playing their household when that happened! So now I've got two sims who I do NOT want to be in love that are now in love because somebody flirted even though I wasn't even playing their household! I also have somebody that made a few enemies since she keeps fighting her neighbors when I'm not playing her!
Is there a way to stop this from happening? I know that I can just readjust their relationship but they've got the memories for it and everything. It'd be much easier if I could prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future. So does anyone know a way? Thanks in advance

Well, sounds like Free Will played a trick on you Turn it off, and it wont happen again, I guess.

I'd never do the above thing, though. One of the charms of Sims for me, is when my little creatures go off and do something unexpected. It often makes for twists and turns in my story lines, that I did not see coming, which I for one appreciate..

But yeah, Sims will flirt and fall in love with others that they have high chemistry/good relationship with, even if you don't tell them to (free will) it happens all the time in my dorms..

This isn't a bug, it's a feature. Roll with it. It can happen on community lots, too, only you're seldom on a community lot long enough to get the most extreme relationships.

My apartment neighbors are a lot more likely to make enemies than friends or lovers.

Without mods sims never flirt with each other unless you've already made them flirt with that particular sim. "Check sim out" counts, too. The solution would be to make sure that your sims never flirt with anybody whom you do not want them to autonomously fall in love with.

I've had times where I've moved a new Sim into Belladonna Cove with the intent of fixing her up with Gabriel Green. Typically Gabriel, along with Samantha Cordial, is part of the welcome wagon...and nine times out of ten they flirt with each other, even though, when you first load up BC, they don't have a crush on each other or anything.

Solution: have my Sim flirt with Gabriel in front of Samantha!

Then use the Visitor Controller...unless I don't mind having the Greens pick up the trash can several times a day!

One thing you could do about those sims is to download ACR and friendzone them. But personally I love that my playables can go building up relationships when I'm not controlling them. It's something I'm taking advantage of right now with the Oldies in Pleasantview - I keep making them invite over Mary-Sue's family for dinner in the hope that by the time I play them, they won't all want to kill Lilith.

I'm not a fan of ACR, tried it once. I still have it in a folder on my desktop; perhaps what I should do is start a custom neighborhood and play with it some so I get more familiar with it.

Not true, Babs - I don't have relationship-altering mods and never had Lily Pond flirt with her sorority sister's boyfriend/boyfriend's frat brother Jay McCullough, but when I entered the Tri-Var lot for the first time this last rotation, I found they'd kissed each other! Without falling in love, which is interesting. And I didn't see it happening, though it was probably at the Jones/Centowski wedding, or possibly the Iana/Ottomas wedding, at St. Elvis's Wedding Chapel, as I can't think when else they'd have been on the same lot. This makes a certain amount of sense, as weddings do go to people's heads. Their SOs were there in both cases, but there's no caught cheating events.

It's possible, of course, that this is a memory glitch.

When I got back to the House of Fallen Trees, I found that at some point married Lora had fallen in love and kissed with housemate Phoenix; which is arguably my own fault since I gave him an unrequited crush on her in SimPE. She's never flirted with him under my direction. And they kind of avoided each other all day, which makes sense.

Certainly autonomous unprecedented flirting is rare. I often come back to sims and find them with erotic wants for sims for whom they have no erotic relationship, which I write off as dreams, and take as evidence that they were checking each other out on community lots in the interim. The wants always roll away when the sim wakes up, anyway.

AlexandraSpears, these pre-mades were set up to behave that way by developers, check this out:
http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Gabriel_Green

If it's true that there is autonomous flirting, like some people insist there is, it would be too rare to be a rule in their case.

Peni, are you sure it was not a glitch, since there was no jealousy or cheating? The second one sounds normal to me, you gave him a crush, so at some point he did something, and they fell in love.

In all my years of playing I haven't seen a single autonomous romantic interaction. A few times I thought so, but it always turned out that I did something prior to that, be it "check sim out" or "scope room". Some sims have fallen in love while shopping in businesses if they happened to have crushes, some sims flirted autonomously if they already were set as targets. I'd love to see a real non-autonomous interaction at least once.

Yeah, I'd been wondering if some Sims were scripted...well, I took care of THAT problem!

My sister is playing a vanilla game - not a single mod - and she claims that it happened in her game, Sims falling for each other autonomously. Supposedly a married woman Sim kissed a friend of hers from work in front of her entire family.
As far as I remember how the game was designed to work, no romantic interactions should be available to them autonomously - this is why I installed ACR. But I feel that I must believe my sister, since she isn't a noob when it comes to Sims - she's been a player for years. Maybe some later expansion added at least some freedom in their romantic interactions, at least for romance Sims, or something like that?
I must say my sim-world is a bit askew when I consider this issue. Autonomous romance is not supposed to happen. Or is it?

The thing about Sims flirting on their own. It can happen in a mod free game however when you first load the game all Sims (townies and NPC's alike) with the exception of the pre-loaded binned Sims are asexual. Until someone does a flirt action usually the "check out" option at that time it establishes the Sims gender preference albeit on the low side.

Once their gender preference has been established their will be some autonomous flirting. It usually requires high chemistry and a small relationship number and it's only the very minor flirting options. Without gender preferences being set their will be no autonomous romance actions of any kind at all. The big thing that ACR does besides giving you a wider variety of actions is it allows you to set the gender preference for your entire hood with one button.

What will never happen under any circumstances in an vanilla game is autonomous woo-hoo. To me that is the biggest advantage of ACR not only for the possible drama, but really you can set it so there is no cheating, is that I no longer have to make decisions about my Sims love life. Especially the whole "try for baby" aspect of it I'm so much happier having that be something out of my control, no matter how much I swear at the computer when I get something unexpected.

To sum it all up, yes minor romantic autonomous interactions can happen in an game with no mods but only after the Sims gender preference has been established. This includes born in game Sims when they age up to teen they have no gender preference.

In my experience, a kiss is not always considered as cheating; it depends on the "kiss level"... I mean, autonomous "minor" kisses, peck, tender, and romantic, do not give the "cheating memory", nor have they triggered any jealousy issues in my game. The "bigger" kisses, and of course woohoo, are counted as cheating.

Greeting and good-bye kisses aren't experienced as erotic and do not trigger jealousy; not even the Violent Smooch of Greeting.

Incidentally, married Lora doesn't have a "had an affair" memory to go with the kiss and falling in love with the housemate. So I'm not at all sure what to make of that, mechanically. For story purposes it works fine; Phoenix reveals his feelings, she has an emotional response, but doesn't act on it, they avoid each other in confusion.

I think the statement that this never happens unless the player makes a Sim flirt with another is totally wrong imho.

This has happened in my game since NightLife. I have stayed on community lots long enough to watch my married Sims (that I wasn't currently playing) flirt with other Sims and develope crushes and hold hands, kiss or whatever. Or any other single Sims that were just townies also get involved with your Sim though you have never had them flirt. So, stating 'don't allow your Sim to ever flirt' will not stop the game engine from allowing your Sims to interact.

This is nothing new in the game, the OP just didn't spend enough time on a community lot to see flirting, fighting or bonding in some other way to realize this isn't new and AL lots are semi community lots (in one way) as far as Sims will do what they want to do when you aren't playing them. Freewill off will stop some social interactions.

That's a reason why I have Pescado's romance mod. A married Family Sim will reject a flirt no matter how high the relationship score with the other Sim.

A married Romance Sim, on the other hand....

EDIT: A story to tell along this vein!

So I started up Belladonna Cove (again). I created two female Sims that I intended for Gabriel Green and Armand DeBateau.

The usual thing with Samantha and Gabriel came up, so Amy (my Sim for Gabriel) flirted with him right in front of Samantha, effectively ticking off Samantha.

That's not all. Later I had Amy at Cratus Gym, and Samantha was there, and I heard the "fall in love" sound. I was like, what's going on here? I made Samantha selectable and found that she had kissed Armand and they were in love! HUGE facepalm! I was thinking, "You did NOT just do that! You little hussy!"

I moved Annette into Cornerstone Condominiums and had her ask Armand on a date. During that time he fell in love with her and had wants to get engaged to Samantha AND Annette! I do have the "lose old loves" mod, though, so when he proposed to Annette he just had a crush on Samantha, and when they got married, he lost the crush.

In fact I remember a time when I had a Sim on a date with Armand, Samantha came right up and kissed him and my Sim didn't even react.

I think Belladonna Cove is where the romance mod is needed the most, at least when I play.

Last edited by AlexandraSpears : 28th Feb 2012 at 05:34 PM.

Thanks for all the input guys, it was fun reading everyone's stories Normally I would have just rolled with it but with these particular sims I wasn't willing too haha. I'll have to try out you guy's suggestions