Hey all,
If you started seeing this behavior only after the October 11th patch, please use this thread instead as we are tracking these as 2 separate issues.
Anyone still having issue with this i might have something you can try...
i had same problem was tearing my hair out trying to solve it.
for me it was a hidden relationship bit sentiment that was causing it.
i found it purely by accident
my sims partner got flirted with and rejected the flirt yet my sim got jealous cheating buff and sentiment so i removed the buff and all sentiments (debug cheat remove all sentiments) but she was still doing the mean social in the middle of friendly and romance conversations
so next i checked hidden buffs and there was a hidden angry cheating buff, removed that and cleared all hidden buffs still kept happening
so like others have done i turned off auto mean for a while
it was when i aged up my sim to young adult i realised
when they get the silly happy relationship bits when they age up and pause actions you have them doing to think about family member for an hour
so i went in to remove the relationship bit first with her mother (who she was also kept being mean to) it was there i spotted another festering grudge buff, along with other sentiments) removed it and did same with her partner and noticed another angry cheating buff there so removed that too and bits for her partner and mother toward her and that sorted the problem
you need debug cheats to set the relationship bits unless anyone knows a regular cheat to do it
if you have debug cheats...
shift click on the sim that your sim is being mean to
go through the menu, find cheat relationship
remove relationship bit
see if in the list there is a angry sentiment and remove it
do the same the other way round too as i notice they still be mean sometimes if another sim has a hidden buff against them
and if you haven't already checked for hidden buffs you can use mccc buff control to see if there is one there and remove it or just use the Sims.remove_all_buffs cheat
this whole sentiments and lifestyle system is totally wreaking my game especially with an already f**d up romance and jealousy system
have turned off lifestyles in options but that doesn't work and yes i have a ton of mods i ain't even gonna bother with the game without mods so don't even anyone ask
i have to have mods to make some of my sims faithful then more mods to stop them being jealous when their faithful partner is being faithful and even more mods to block all the other ridiculous stuff the devs can't be bothered to fix..
I turned autonomous mean interactions back on to check if maybe the problem had been solved and it didn't take long for one of my sims to again autonomously be mean to their beloved spouse for no reason: both sims's motives were fine, neither is mean or evil, and the conversation was pleasant until then. I checked my sims' hidden buffs and relationship bits, but I couldn't find any hidden negative ones that would be causing it.
Actually, writing this I took another look at the sims and their buffs, and when they're talking to each other they both have a moodlet/buff called "near unfriendly". I initially didn't pay attention to that because MCCC lists it as "buff_near_friendly" so I thought that's what it was. But I can't remove this "near unfriendly" buff, and I have no idea why they have it. I'm so confused.
EDIT: I looked at the buff_near_friendly tuning file in Sims 4 Studio and the buff name within the file is "Near Unfriendly" and has the same code (0x85C60C0C) as the near_unfriendly buff. If that's just a naming mistake that doesn't affect gameplay then it's no problem, but now I'm wondering if there's something else wrong with the near_friendly buff. Thinking back, when my married sims interact, they often display negative thought balloons - thumbs down icon, cross over the other sim's face - about each other even when they're having a pleasant conversation and have very high relationship stats with no negative sentiments.
I included screenshots the "buff_near_friendly" and "buff_near_unfriendly" tuning files for comparison.
