Paranoid about opening save

Have you made a backup of your save? If you have you could try it out and if something goes wrong you always have your backup to fall back on.

make backup of your save somewhere safe for example i have mine on memory stick so I may copy it from there if things go awry and I can be sure since its on stick its definitely not anywhere near my game folders

then since you have that backup you can delete corrupted file in game folder and replace it with backup file if things go plum = its okay to do things with your save

although I personally will not be doing anything in my main save until this is fixed because i want to be sure and I might have to discard changes i make so it feels kinda pointless to make them

I just play throw away save or build in different save instead cause at least builds i can transfer over to my main save later via my library and it shall cause no problem

I have my main save and two "side saves" based on it for various purposes. One of those is usually up to date, or reasonably so, with the main save just in case. When I need them I alternate between the two side saves and update them to be close to the main at that point, which means doing some cheating to add or delete some relationships or build up some skills.