How to set Turn Ons and Turn Offs in The Sims 4 Lovestruck

At last, my love has come along, if you change "my love" to "Turn Ons and Turn Offs in The Sims 4" and "come along" to "made their long-awaited return to the franchise". (You'd also need to change "has" to "have" for it to work grammatically…)

Look, the point is, The Sims 4 Lovestruck expansion pack and its accompanying base game update have between them quite comprehensively overhauled dating and romantic relationships in TS4. This includes adding Turn Ons and Turn Offs, which debuted in The Sims 2: Nightlife 19 years ago. Even people who can't have been born at the time have been lamenting the absence of this mechanic from subsequent Sims games ever since, and at last the time has come to edit your Sims' yucks and yums with a high degree of specificity.

How does it work, you ask? Well, read on below for everything you need to know about setting Turn Ons and Turn Offs in The Sims 4 Lovestruck.

How to set Turn Ons and Turn Offs in The Sims 4

Unlike some of the new relationship features added into the base game as part of the free update Patch 162, you will need to own the Lovestruck expansion pack to set Turn Ons and Turn Offs for your Sims.

Now known collectively as the Attraction system (as opposed to TS2's version which was called Chemistry, despite them doing basically the same thing), Turn Ons and Turn Offs are another addition to the broader Likes & Dislikes system that was introduced to The Sims 4 a few years ago.

You can edit your Sim's Turn Ons and Turn Offs in CAS, which can be accessed directly from the Attraction subheading of the Simology tab.

Attraction sits next to Likes & Dislikes in the personality area of CAS, but has its own resource pool: just as you can select a total of 50 Likes & Dislikes, you can also select a total of 50 Turn Ons and Turn Offs across all subcategories. That's 100 preferences total per Sim, but capped at 50 for each tab.

Subcategories of Turn Ons and Turn Offs are:

• Way of Life: Influenced by a partner's skills, career, net worth, or other relationships.
• Characteristics: Influenced by a partner's traits.
• Romance Styles: Influenced by the type(s) of romantic social interaction performed by a partner. The choices are broadly comparable to the subcategories of romantic interactions available between Sims (Flirtation, Affection, Physical Intimacy), but with Gift Giving and WooHoo counted separately.
• Hair Colour: Influenced by the partner's hair colour. Unlike outfit colour and fashion, the associated tags cannot be directly viewed in CAS, and while some choices are straightforward, there are multiple hair colour swatches that fall under some of the more common descriptions seen here (e.g. auburn, black, brown, blonde).
• Outfit Colour: Influenced by the colour tag(s) attached to a partner's outfit (which can be viewed in CAS).
• Fashion: Influenced by the fashion tag(s) attached to a partner's outfit (which can be viewed in CAS). The choices are identical to the fashion preferences under Likes & Dislikes, but set independently of them, since the other one only determines a Sim's feelings about their own clothing.

What do Turn Ons and Turn Offs do?

Turn Ons and Turn Offs don't just exist in a vacuum in The Sims 4. Quite simply, Sims will be more attracted to partners who align with their Turn Ons, and less attracted to partners who align with their Turn Offs — it's still possible to get two Sims to hook up if they aren't attracted to each other, but it'll take more work! This cumulative effect on a Sim's Attraction to a partner or potential partner contributes towards the new Romantic Satisfaction contexts in their relationship panel.

Romantic Satisfaction more or less works on a points-based metre, but you can't view it directly in that level of detail. You can, however, see how your Sim feels about their relationship overall based on some positive/neutral/negative qualitative assessments.

Depending on the Romantic Satisfaction of both Sims in a relationship — and, as with Attraction, Romantic Satisfaction is tracked separately for both parties involved — the decay rate of the romantic relationship between them will increase or decrease. Couples with overall negative Romantic Satisfaction will see their feelings towards one another fade quickly, while couples with overall positive Romantic Satisfaction will potentially even see some increases in their romantic relationship bar even without directly engaging in romantic social interaction.

For more on TS4, be sure to check out our essential The Sims 4 cheats page!