The Sims 2 Guide and FAQ

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5.1 Socialising
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Socialising is the key to making and keeping friends. Socialising does not only
raise your Sims mood but in many cases can also fulfil many of your Sims wants.
This is even important if your has the popularity or romance aspirations.

The key to socialising is to keep it simple. Start slow when you first meet a 
new Sim. You will notice that your daily and lifetime score will not change much
to start with, and this is because the "chat" interaction has a very low score
as interactions go, where as the "joke", "play", "hug", and other interactions
have a higher score.

Note - The Higher the Interaction score, the bigger the difference it makes
         on both your social rating and the relationship scores.

  Tip - Do not try and move to fast. Just because an option is available does 
        not mean it will work. The other Sim must feel the same way as your Sim 
        in order for the interaction to work. If the interaction fails, you may
        have a lot of ground to make back up.

A thing to remember is that you have to have an idea of where you want your Sims
relationship to go with other Sims. With family members, try to keep your Daily 
and Lifetime relationship score above 70. This will really help with things like
Child’s/Teens asking for Homework help and asking to go out. It will also help 
if you wish to change the personality stats of one of your Sims.

Any Sim can love any other Sim regardless of sex, and any Sim can be Married/
Joined to any other Sim, again, regardless of sex. This can cause a number of
problems for your Sim, as you need to be careful of what level you take your
relationship to. 

   Tip - Jealousy is something to be very careful of. More detail on this is
         under Section 5.3 The Love Triangle and Up.