Help, my teen Sims are trapped in a vicious cycle of misery and crushes

Normally when I play The Sims 4, I don’t make any Sims younger than a “young adult.” I tend to make original characters or re-create my friends in the game, but I never had interest in controlling young sims and dealing with their learned traits or school issues.

That said, when my manager said I should check out the High School Years expansion pack to write gameplay guides for it, I did what any normal person would do: I made myself, my husband, and a close friend as teenaged Sims, and put them into a house together without adult supervision.

I recognize that these teens being full of pent up sexual desire and rage is my own fault. I had forgotten that The Sims 4 added sexual orientation and preference, and I forgot to set the two guys’ orientations to straight (as they are in real life) in-game.

Right off the bat, my husband’s Sim entered a “flirty” mood and began to flirt with the Sim that looks like me. He formed a crush on her, which I thought was funny and endearing. However, things shifted almost immediately after, as his Sim turned to our friend’s Sim and began to flirt with him, too. They also developed crushes on each other. Awkward.

I attempted to update their sexual preferences in Create-a-Sim, but the damage had already been done. Everyone had crushes on each other. At that point, I didn’t know that I could make them get over their crushes, so I panicked. There was now a complete love triangle-circle-oblong in the house, which consisted of the teenage versions of myself, my husband, and a close friend. And unfortunately it made the teens moody and awful.

Image: Maxis/Electronic Arts via Polygon

These teen Sims kept flipping emotions on a dime. If they weren’t in a “flirty” or “very flirty” mood, they were “tense” from being around a crush, or even angry from seeing their crushes talk to somebody else. This, of course, kept happening all of the time since they were all crushing on each other. It was a hellscape.

Normally with my adult Sims, they retain positive moodlets: happy, inspired, confident — and it’s easy to keep their spirits up. But my teens were a mess. Any positive moodlet they would gain would be overpowered by their jealous rage from seeing their crush talking to somebody else.

It also didn’t help that when making our Sims, I thought it would be funny to give us all realistic traits from our teen years. I gave my Sim the “gloomy” trait because, well, I was a depressed emo kid! And so in addition to all the horrible moods above, my Sim would randomly get really sad and cry alone in her bed. To make matters worse, her crush roommates would see her sad and it would make them sad too.

Between school, part-time jobs to keep the household afloat (remember, there’s no adults living in here, because I did not think this through), and making sure the Sims’ needs were met, I had to force the teens to take cold showers, talk themselves down in front of mirrors, and essentially just spam any action that would drag them out of whatever fit they were currently throwing.

Image: Maxis/Electronic Arts via Polygon

After scrolling through pages of actions by chance, I noticed there was an option to force your Sim to “get over” their crushes — which only worked sometimes. While I was able to snap our friend out of a cringe crush on me, my husband was too enamored with the friend and he couldn’t get over the crush. His fate was sealed.

I ended up pairing up my Sim with my husband’s (as one does, in The Sims), in the hopes it would squash any lingering crush problems in the house. But even while in the relationship, my husband’s Sim kept crushing on his friend. This put my Sim in an absolutely foul mood. Nothing was fixed.

So now I continue on, attempting to soothe my hormonal Sims before they go to school or work so their crushes don’t negatively impact their careers. Going back, I realized I should have forced our Sims to be related so this wouldn’t happen, but it’s too late. I’m in too deep.

Learn from my mistakes: Remember to set your Sims’ sexual orientation and bloodline so you don’t (or do, if that’s what you want) end up with horny agony teen house.