Your Sims Can Finally Have a Polyamorous Relationship in 'The Sims 4' — Sort Of

Over the past few years, the team behind The Sims 4 has implemented many long-sought-after additions to the game, from horses to infants to apartments — and now, they've introduced brand new relationship dynamics. The newest expansion pack, Lovestruck, has added turn-ons and turn-offs, as well as a plethora of additional new ways to explore romance. But not all the new content is locked behind a paywall: there's been a few major features added to the base game, as well.

One new feature is the Romantic Boundaries menu, which opens up a whole new way for your Sims to experience romance — and even opens up the possibility of acting out polyamorous relationships in the game. Here's how it works.

While the ability to have multiple romantic partners at once isn't new to The Sims 4, you were never able to do so without a bit of jealousy involved. If you found yourself in more than one relationship at once, you'd have to sneak around in order to avoid being caught cheating by your partner(s), making it pretty much impossibly for your Sim to be polyamorous or engage in an open relationship — at least, without mods.

Now, though, the New Romantic Boundaries feature allows you to toggle jealousy on and off for certain romantic acts, like physical intimacy and WooHoo. This means that you can create a Sim who doesn't mind having their partner flirt with other Sims, but they may get jealous if said partner engages in physical romance, or vice versa.

These customizable options even allow you to set your Sim's standpoint on whether or not they're open to changing their Romantic Boundaries through gameplay.

And if you want to create a polycule within Create a Sim, all you have to do is set each person's relationship to each other as "Partner."

However, Romantic Boundaries are not exactly a perfect implementation of polyamory into the game and don't run as smoothly as some might like, as the romance system was built around monogamous relationships.

For example, when flirting with multiple partners at once, the conversation may turn into an Awkward Encounter. Reportedly, this bug has been especially present for console players.

Additionally, some fans have been complaining that they shouldn't have to turn off jealousy in general in order to have multiple partners: "[The game needs] to make adjustments for exclusivity in throuples and stuff like that if it wants to allow polyamory. ... I dont want to turn off all the Romantic Boundaries of all my Sims in that throuple just so they don't get jealous of each other," one player wrote on X.

Though it's not a perfect system, Romantic Boundaries certainly give players more freedom of expression than ever before — and in a game made to mimic real life, representation is paramount.