I just wanted to play a family I had not played for a while and discovered something realy wierd.

The man and the woman was created as a married couple but now when I opened the lot they were not married anymore. The woman had the symbole that shows that she is married but he did not have it. I thougt it was some temporary error so I restarted the family whitout saving but the problem was still there. Infact, her image was not in his relations meny at all but she was married and BFE whit the man. How can that be? I think I have installed some patches and EPs since the last time I played the family but I do not think this course the problem. Anyone have an idea what this can be?

It may or may not be a sign of hood corruption. I've had a couple of one-sided relationship decays for no reason and they don't seem to be related to anything. Nor is this the kind of thing you can really run the game FAQ on, as there's no way to test.

You can restore the relationship in SimPE with no further repercussions. Don't forget to check that he's got all the appropriate memories.

I did spend some time, checking some other familys in the same area. Familys that have'nt been played for some time (in fact, one on them have never been played. It's just two older sims I did move out of a house as I don't wanted to have 6 sims on the same lot) but all of the adults in this familys had their correct married status. I did visit the "broken" family and did check the mans memories (sorry for not doing so before) and he had memories of being engaged and married to the woman. Wierd.

When I first opened the "broken" family it was night and in the morning at breakfirst I did see a sumbol flashing by. It was the best fiend symbole whit circle and a / over it (sorry, no sush symbol on my keyboard) as they was'nt best friends anymore. According to the relations menu of the man, they are not (as I told you before the woman is nowhere to be seen in the mans relations menu). I don't know if this helps you but on the familys loading screen he kisses the woman as they were still in love or someting.

The other familys in the (sub) neighbourhood seems to be fine as far as I know. I did get a little suprised the other day when one of the townies I had placed in an other family had all of her workmates before the family members in her relationsmenu but I think it's the way it should be. A little strange as they are not friends anymore but still okey.

Sometimes relationships decay at different rates. If the relationship is still fairly high, and time has been passing for them (say, on community lots) without their interacting, they will cease to be best friends, which is what you saw happening.

Marital status, however, should remain in the absence of a divorce. Better fix that even if you decide you need to work on the relationship (one good date should do it; heck, a few meals together probably will) in-game.

I have a system in my game where relationships never decay unless one of the partner does something to pull the relationship down, as i.e. talk about subjects that the other sim doesn't like. (absurd, in my meaning). The same thing also happens to me. Without any explanation some of the partners lose marriage status, though they have it and cannot marry or engage another sim.
I didn't find a logical explanation either. There are lots of things in TS2 without any explanation and I could write a book about it.
I suppose that is caused by the same effect when you pull some old ghosts in game (I use to do this for a reason that I could say "Don't do it home"!)
Such ghosts are married and are the ancesters of the sims living in the hoods, but if you check their memories, they don't even know their spouses, though all the relationships exist.
I made a test with a couple died long ago and I could make them have All the memories again by interacting with each other. So they first kissed, fell in love, made-out, got engaged, married, did woohoo, then I made them to parents to one of my solitary and orphan townie. The townie got a full family with siblings and all they never had. I did this without ressurrecting the ghosts.
As I said "Do not try it home!". I have lots of tools that you don't have.

Sorry if I did missunderstand anything, blame it on my headache.

As I understand you, I could try to send the sims out to some dates and see what happends. I think I'm going to test that. SimPE may be a other way to fix the problem and I have it downloaded but not installed. Later I have being informed that the program can mess up the saved files so want to avoid the use of it as far as possible.

Yes, the sims have been visiting community lots but never been played and "my sim" have not been interacting whit them. I have the "casual ramance" hack installed but I do not remember seing them cheating on their partner (woohoo in the hot tub or photoboth), a fairly good reason for breaking up a marriage.

I'm going to investigate the issue and see what I find. To make a test, I'm going to open a family I have directly under Veronaville. It's a family I had not played in years but whoes members use to walk arund and interact whit my other sims. If the man and the woman is still married, there is something wrong whit the other family.

There are two ways to ensure that SimPE doesn't mess up your game.

1) Do a full backup of your neighborhood before opening SimPE. That's copying your whole neighborhood folder to another location, not just using "create backup" in SimPE. That way, nothing you do in SimPE is irreversible.
2) Don't mess with any of the complicated files or commit to any changes you aren't sure you understand. Leave the HEX files alone until and unless you understand how they work. Don't go arbitrarily changing memories around just to see what you can do with them. Double-check any changes you make before committing and saving. That kind of thing. The relationship scores and statuses we're talking about here can be accessed readily through the SimBrowser plug-in and changed with a checkbox or the dragging of a bar, and you can see what you did without understanding code at all, so they're relatively safe to play around with as long as you don't play silly buggers and do things like give a dog marital status.

Just proceed sensibly, and not when you have a headache, and you'll be fine.

The relationship numbers can easily be fixed in the course of play with normal interactions if you're not comfortable changing them directly. People are always losing best friend status because they haven't seen each other in awhile, and as long as unplayed sims are appearing on community lots, time is passing for them in the game. If one of them has actually lost marital status, though, that'll have to be fixed with an editing tool. I don't believe it will spontaneously regenerate.

There is some kind of glitch that arises in the relationship coding from time to time. I've had parents suddenly marking children they raised as "unknown," even when the child was still BFF with them. This is, as far as I can tell, Just One of Those Things that happens when you get a lot of complex coding together. It should be addressed, but isn't necessarily the Knell of Doom or anything.

Yes, practically there's nothing in the game that cannot be repaired, unless it is someone like me that mess-up things on purpose. Do not rush to uninstall and install again the game because sometimes such action causes you more troubles than simple SimPE solutions. You can lose all your contents and adjustments and even forget what or how you had before. Even with my mess, I can play a hood up to the fifth generation and this is enough to get fed up of the hood.

Okey, if you say so I'm going to belive you. The replys have been very helpful. Now I know that the problem can be fixed and I have to make a decision if I'm feel sure anough to fix it.