I was having the same issue. I play with a number of mods and a bunch of CC, so I turned everything off*, restarted the game, gave my sims some hair and clothes 😉, and courted a new best friend. This time it counted.
Initially I thought it might be MCCC's multiple BFFs option, but the problem persisted even with that option turned off in MCCC's options. And tbh I'm too lazy to go through my eleventy-gazillion mods to work out which exact one it was. At any rate, it was definitely a mod issue for me.
* Specifically, I disabled custom content and mods in Game Options > Other > Untick "Enable Custom Content and Mods"
