I've been playing the Sims 2 since it's release in 2004, but to this day still manage to come across new things about the game. I've encountered an issue in Pleasantview which I suspect might be related to corruption. I decided to try some new pairings and decided to have Cassandra Goth and Don Lothario get back together, after he left her at the alter. Their relationships with one another were at 100/100 for both lifetime and daily, they were in love, friends, best friends, etc. I was playing in the Pleasant family, Daniel and Mary-Sue divorced, and he moved out into his own apartment. Mary-Sue invited Daniel out to a community lot since they're still friends and Cassandra Goth was there. Then, I realized Daniel had a crush on Cassandra. I made Cassandra selectable to check her memories to see if her and Daniel have ever kissed, but nothing was there. So I thought that he must have flirted with her when I wasn't paying attention. Another suspicious thing was that Cassandra had a want to "Fall in Love" which is highly unusual for a family sim that's already in love. When I checked her relationship panel, Don Lothario was nowhere to be seen. Immediately, I left the lot and went to Don's home and Cassandra was in his panel with no issues or changes. I clicked the phone to invite her over and she said that she would "Rather play Myshuno with a pack of llamas." I exited the game, went to SimPE, and sure enough Cassandra had a 0/0 daily and lifetime relationship with Don while his relationship toward her was in the late 90s for both relationship types. It looks like the game completely wiped the relationship from Cassandra's end, almost as a sign to me not to pair the two together.

After investigating this, I ran the HoodChecker and found a number of invalid relationships between various sims (I have all Maxis neighborhoods together using Tarlia's clean templates), but the most alarming aspect was that some sims managed to have a relationship with NPC Stinky Skunk. I've since deleted the neighborhood since I only played a few days in each of the Pleasantview households. I uninstalled the game because I read corruption spreads if any NPCs are "touched" and that NPCs are universal, etc. so future corruption would be inevitable.

I'm perfectly fine with forfeiting my neighborhood, but my main questions are why this happened, is it something I did, and how can I prevent this strange event from happening in future gameplay? I know corruption is random even with clean templates and I guess my neighborhood showed symptoms early on, assuming this was corruption related.

Thanks!

This is a known and apparently random glitch. It may or may not be related to corruption; we simply don't know, but it doesn't seem to be related to anything a player could do. It's not by itself a reason to stop playing the neighborhood. Use an editing tool to give Cassandra the relationship to Don you think she should have and carry on.

I once has a Sim lose his relationship to his mother. I spotted the "lose him as a best friend" icon over her head when she spoke to him. I thought something serious must have happened to cause a rift between them, but when I checked his panel, it said he had only just met her! I quit without saving and used either SimPE or the Sim Manipulator to reinstate his 100/100 relationship to her. (Family bonds are usually strong in my game.) If I remember rightly I was following Peni's advice. That was about 3 years ago and I'm still playing the 'hood (it was my beloved Veronaville). Try not to over-react to glitches in your game. They're usually not as bad as you think! I just play carefully and keep plenty of back-ups.

I've had that happen as well, with no signs of corruption other than the usual. Those relationships with the skunk probably were just normal weird stuff that happens. My rule of thumb is, if Hoodchecker can fix it, it's harmless.