Other played households progressing without me

I play a lot of games where I have multiple households in the same game file. In my most recent save file, I have A LOT of households marked as "played." Even though I only really focus on one or two households at a time, each one is essential to the story that I have going on. However, when I'm playing as one household for a long period of time, my other "played" households seem to progress without me-- such as, the husbands are having romantic relationships with other random female sims, and a lot of the families just keep spawning ridiculous amounts of babies (one had six babies at one time). I have aging set to "only active household" and autonomy on full. Please, if there is any way to stop the random affairs and baby spawning in my placed households, that would be greatly appreciated! ☹️