I have no hard and fast rules on that. Sometimes I'll have a storyline that calls for it or is dead against, but with free will and ACR in place just about anything can happen with sims, love, romance and remmarriage. That said I haven't yet played many widowed or divorced sims. Bisette Savage who recently dumped her high school boyfriend and father of her child is young enough to find a lover or husband, but she is an ambitious romance sim with a desire to be a rock god and a perfect mother. So I see a lot of short flings in her future. She is toying with the idea of letting lover Van Martin move in. He is great with her daughter Carina, not too concerned with monogamy and a second income would be a big help while she builds herself a musician.

I did just a do a Brady Bunch in another neighborhood. Widow Ayelia Danvers lost her husband to a mysterious fire. With the insurance money she moved herself and her children to the small town of Sleepy Hollow with plans to write her great novel. She never counted on falling in love with Widower Deon Aldon, however when they met lightning struck and the two couldn't stay away from each other (seriously they were always showing up on community lots and flirting in the background when I played other households, even with very modified ACR settings). Not only did Ayelia and Deon get along ridicolously well, but even playing hands-off their kids got along swimmingly. Not one to fight fate I gave into their mutual wants, moved them in together and let them married.

The nice thing about Ayelia is that she is reincarnated from another neighborhood and carries a twin token that I thought I shook, haha, nope. Of course her and Deon had twins almost immediately.

As much as I had other plans I am actually really enjoying playing this crowded house full of people who actually like each other and get along without my interference. Deon's daughters who are a bit older than Ayelia's sons took Khalil and Kalin under their wing happy to help with homework and babysits, especially after the twins were born and Ayelia's youngest daughter Nealynda is delighted to have gained two elder sisters. The only real question is whether or not the great novel will ever get written?

tl;dr I do and I recommend it.

Most remarry rather quickly. Widowed sims take more time to find new partners than divorced. In part this is because divorce in my game is often the result of one or both partners already having found a new love. If there´s just a general rift between two simjs of a couple, they tend to live seperately, but remain married on paper.
In my modern age yet feudal Desiderata Valley often the first marriage is arranged or at least a head decision. After one partner has died the widow/widower faces less of a social stigma if they marry their true love late in life. They have done their duty, after all. Also in this neighborhood I have a lot of widows/widowers due to it being a very violent place. If those singles have young children or toddlers, they are most likely to move in with a friend in the same situation and often the arrangement blossoms into a partnership.

I very rarely allow my sims to remarry/divorce. The few times it has happened, though, it is because I deliberately wanted it to happen that way. Usually, divorces only occur in my game if I don't really like that couple together anymore and I think they would be better with another sim. Remarriage after spousal death is even more uncommon- I'd say that it only happens if the sim is young enough to marry again, or a male elder.

In my latest hood, there are about 5 couples in the midst of either breaking up, or divorcing because they got stupid. One of the women (family aspiration of course) is having a nervous breakdown all over the hood about her personal agony, and she wants to have a baby, get married and have a career. She might get remarried, if she gets through her mental problems...if any sim male is up to competing with her for drama, that is.

The others are chasing the grass over the septic tank, and perhaps they'll remarry as well, but it's not a given. When there's children involved you have to be mindful that they won't be the ones to suffer the most. Even in sim life.

Phrases like "young enough to marry again - or a male elder" bug the snot out of me as a childless married bisexual elder. Because the implication is that if you can't produce children, you shouldn't get married. And that's BS.

I actually have another widow and widower in Drama Acres. The only reason Kitty Hawkins hasn't remarried or hooked up with anybody is that the only person she knows who is anything like a fit successor to her late husband Goz is Goz's brother-in-law Red Onions. Red's wife Livva Ann only just died, and Kitty is showing an obvious interest in him, but it's too early to move on him. It could happen.

When Pierra Curian unexpectedly survived his wife Marie, he and longtime widow and friend Mary Munny consoled each other, but there was no question of marrying.

On the plus side, I now want to have formidable Widespot Elder Daytona Beech go out and get her a trophy husband. I see no downside to this and wonder that I never thought to do it before.

I'd love it if I eventually had an elder female sim who caught herself a young husband - tru cougar style So far, no one fits the bill, but I like the idea.

Cougar elders

Personally, I dont ignore elders just because they cannot produce children. It's because I usually give them shorter agespan. Its a little bit tricky to wed one when they only live less than a sim week to live in my hood! Im aging them up to suit the premodern theme where they live alot shorter than humans do today while the younger sims getting married in their teens. So the life expectacy is between 50 and 60 and reach elderstage at 46, But this will increase each generation. Little bit odd to have grand-grandchildren who are in teens when their grand-grandfathers are only in their late 50's. Perhaps it isnt weirdb now , but like 300-200 years ago.

I do have a lot of older teen girls and younger boys (all playable) and can't find them a suitable spouse in their ages, so I might consider giving them a 6 years-or-so older wife (not cougar style I know. Im somewhat oldfashioned in my gameplay. I prefer same or younger wifes to my sims. Although my dad is 6 year older than my mother in RL )...OR my other options:
-> marry someone from a generation below them (the oldest granddaughters of the founders has now kids between 3 and 6 years old...)
-> or make have my rich simmies having some boy lovers. If I was remember correctly, there were people who were lovers to the rich/noble people during the victorian era. (but then again, my hood is a fiction based on that era, so im fine some areas are wrong).
-> or make the girls into maids/nuns and the boys into military recruits for most of the life and let them have one affair or two.

Ive about 140 teens/children right now so they should make their love life work in some way at least. (although not the typical romance aspiration way., 99% sims are conservative and oldfashioned. I dont use the romance aspiration because everyone is so close related at all. :D).

Sometimes they do - often they don't. I think I like having loner sims more because I'm a loner myself, and it's nice to see them lead happy, fulfilling lives without needing a partner because so often on tv shows etc it's often portrayed that you need a relationship to have a complete life. Obviously for some people - and sims! - that is important. Some of my sims just get married because I feel they would be that kind of personality that likes having a partner, even if they aren't 'soulmates'. So a lot of it depends on the character of the sim, and also the neighbourhood story I am creating.

It depends on what I'm tying to play them as. If my story calls for them to stay single, they stay single; if remarriage is better, they'll remarry. I don't have a lot of widowed or divorced sims though, just the ones the game gave us.

That was the first time I got the opportunity to do this ever. Not much sims die in my game...and yes, i did.
Beda just...asked Lewis Reiner to move in, and once moved in, they got married.
Lewis Reiner aka : the very interesting someone...

Florentzina, although average lifespan has increased, this does not actually mean that most individuals aged and died younger than we are used to today. Each life has certain crisis time periods, and people who survive those crises have a good chance of living to the next one, and once you've survived the last one, odds are excellent that you'll live into your 90s or later. Your life expectancy increases as you get older.

Remember that infant mortality is sky high in societies that don't have access to good prenatal, immediate postnatal, and early infant care. Children under four die like flies in the absence of good sanitation and antibiotics. This brings the average lifespan way down, and reduces the life expectancy at birth. In such situations, in societies where women marry young and teens have children, many young mothers die of complications of pregnancy and birth; if they also bear children late, that's another crisis period. Men have crisis periods corresponding to periods of high risk-taking, which can be anything from a cultural tradition of doing stupid things as teens, a period of military service, or a lifestage in which high-risk behavior such as raiding or undertaking dangerous work is considered necessary in order to gain a wife or support a family.

What I'm saying is, that you don't have to limit your elders' lifespans, once they become elders. Assign them crisis periods during which they have a higher risk of dying and either determine randomly which ones succumb, or deliberately subject them to risky behaviors when their motives are low during those periods, and you'll model real historical life patterns much more closely. Men in certain occupations (especially if affluent and able to hire out dangerous activity like handling livestock) may live to have three or four young wives if childbearing is dangerous; women in certain social positions (such as a noblewoman whose role encourages her to marry men with military obligations) may similarly survive multiple husbands.

Yes, if my widowed or divorced sims meet someone and hit it off, they have a good shot at remarriage. PT#9 will most likely leave behind a widowed Jenny. She met Gabe O'Mackey at a comm lot when I was playing an owned business so perhaps they'll get married to each other later. Romance sims most likely won't though. According to my system, only Romance sims who have 3 bolts with someone have reasonable odds of making that dice roll. But other aspirations have better odds, *especially* the Family aspiration.

I'm glad you posted that Peni because I would have said something similar. It's a fallacy that just because average age at death was in the 30s or 40s that people didn't live to old age. When a large proportion of each generation karks it in childhood (and it can be as high as 50%), that brings average life expentancy down considerably, that's how averages work. After all, the modern cultural notions we have of wise old women/men, Methuselah, antediluvian stuff are old ideas not new in origin.

Peni Griffin:
I havent read the history in details, so I know some areas might not be exact from what you or others on here know, but I did mention in that post that my hood was a fiction or just inspired . It wasnt suppose to be exacts anyway or else I would have to read dozen of history of books. I prefer to keep it estimated. :P

I don't really kill of (or let them get killed by low motive) my adult or younger sims in my hood nor having the sims have multiply marriage unless its for a story plot. (Some did remarry 1-2 times but not necesarry from complications from diseases or childbirth) where they get married between 15 and 18 and have kids around that time,
so I rather keeping the age span shorter while increasing it a long with marriage/kids customs over time. I know this is not 100% tailored to the exact history of the 19th centuary but Im fine with that. Beside my sims live only for less than 70 sim days (elder stage is at most 24 days or "years" , they become elders at 46 with my mods)even without aging them faster. Keep killing sims at younger age and re-marry them multi-ply thems and keep it very different to each person when playing over 300 playables sims, it would just make the gameplay too complex. Ive already developed a more or less complex social class system and aging span plus keeping it somewhat non-polygamic. It would be a pain in an neck to keep everything relastic.

If every sim had kids at age of 15-18 and 90% of them were somewhat healthy and some of them remarried once or twice with only a couple of exceptions - I do think the average mortality rate would be different, wouldnt it?

I do it by culture and aspiration. In one of my sim cultures, women must be married and if a spouse dies, she will be given to another man (even if she has to be someone's second wife). I have one man that had 2 wives and died. The community is trying to decide who will take the wives and kids. Divorce is not allowed in that culture. In another culture, sims can be single and divorce is allowed but marriage is encouraged as is having a lot of children so remarriage is expected. The majority of sims, though, can be single, divorced, widowed, or remarried depending on the story line and aspiration (family and knowledge sims tend to get remarried while romance and popularity sims do not).

Interesting. I´m a loner, too, and consider myself aromantic on top of that. But though I set out to portray all kinds of people in my sims game, I often find myself thinking "Remember they are not like you, they desperately need the group bond and partnership. Please, Enki, you´ve put your simmies through enough shit, at least keep them species-appropriate and find them a partner already!".

Of course! All Sims deserve love. Especially after a tragedy. I don't always go looking for a new partner for them, but sometimes they meet someone new and have instant chemistry. I feel I'm bound to explore it, for the happiness of my Sim!

Just recently, I actually had to break off an engagement because I realized I made a horrible mistake. A sim I created, a knowledge sim with a love for music became engaged to Nervous Subject, the first guy he dated. After a few days I realized that they weren't all that compatible, and had to split them up.

My sim, Miles, is now happily married to Vidcund Curious. Nervous married Pascal, and not a moment too soon! Just a few short hours after they said, "I do," Pascal gave birth to his alien spawn, a little girl he named Nia.

I'm not aromantic, and I do like (some ) people, I adore my friends and family etc, but I'm just very happy in my own company. I have a lot of hobbies and interests and find most of my time is taken up between those and studying. I enjoy being social whenever I get the chance and wouldn't say I was shy, but I'm happier doing my own thing most of the time. I have sims who are party animals, but part of me likes having sims who, like me, spend their time with hobbies, looking after pets, sometimes hanging out with friends and family, but also cultivating their own personalities

I do not permit divorce, and any divorced Sims (like Armand and Jessica, or Gabe and Alexandra) reconcile with each other--that is my rule. No marrying any other Sim unless your spouse is dead.

Now widowed Sims...that depends. I might have a female elder that's a widow and rather lonely (like Jessica Landgraab, great-great-granddaughter of my founding Sims and widow of Malcolm Landgraab IV, who died in a fire--the same one she would have died in had her father not pleaded with the Grim Reaper) and I might have her marry an elder male. There are times when I want just one pregnancy per family so I have maybe one household to keep track of. I also have to consider who I want them buried next to at Gothier Green Lawns (if a widowed Sim remarries lots of times I put their grave between those of their spouses).

Since I've downloaded a no jealousy mod, divorces are much harder to achieve, but that's okay since I prefer to play generally more faithful couples and if I want them to divorce then I have to really try for it and that's not really how I like to play so I don't do it often. That's not to say I haven't had some sims get divorced and remarried, of course.

It depends on the sim's character and aspiration for me. Fortune sims, for example: if Mortimer Goth were to die in the near future married to Dina Caliente, she would probably have a much faster mourning process and move on to some other poor old rich sap or possibly a poor young rich sap to invite to see a shiny new hungry cowplant; however, in a situation like Mary-Sue and Daniel's divorce, Mary-Sue took a while to get remarried; in fact, for a while, she felt she didn't really have to until the matchmaker helped her meet a CAS sim named Catherine Smith. The two got married without notifying anyone but Mary-Sue's parents, causing much confusion at her daughters' weddings.

I feel Romance sims would very rarely remarry unless they had a Family secondary. Family sims also, if widowed, tend to not remarry unless they had either a poor relationship with their spouse or met the absolute right person. Brandi Broke I've had do both scenarios: in one she remarried (and got herself Malcolm Landgraab IV to boot!) shortly before Dustin headed off to Sim State, and in the other she's just a single pringle who occasionally mingles.

Popularity and Pleasure sims tend to just stick to the dating scene after losing their loved ones, though I have not quite had many widow(er)s with those aspirations.

Actually, WaffleFriez, IRL people who've had a good marriage their first time around are more, not less, likely to remarry if widowed. They not only miss the partner; they miss the state of being married. People who've had one bad marriage won't miss the state and will be distrustful of future prospective partners, having been burned once.

If you look at real life people who are arguably Romance aspiration, a lot of them are serial monogamists. They'll marry at the drop of a hat, but when the initial excitement of the romantic phase wears off, they'll get restless and reject the domestic stage, where you have to learn to live with the fact that the person you fell in love with leaves his socks on the floor, can't be trusted to put the toilet seat down (or worse, never raises it in the first place), and is himself endlessly bothered by the fact that you never can remember to record your purchases in the checkbook. So affairs, divorces, remarriage, new disillusionment - celebrities out the wazoo display this pattern.

I play a class system, so it depends a lot on if there is anyone in that sim's class they can (re)marry. Of course class lines can be crossed, but with consequences >

The upper classes are all about securing their fortunes and keeping the family line and titles going, so if a sim is widowed without children they'll be snapped up by the next eligible gentleman/ lady.

In Pleasantview Cassandra Locksley (born Goth) lost her husband and she started rolling wants to flirt with the headmaster of private school, who she had a cross over lightning bolt for. It didn't want her storyline to be a desperate one, so I ignored that want. Later the Oldies moved in to help maintain the house. After Herb Oldie died Carol and Cassandra fell in love, but after their first romantic action Carol died. I decided to keep some dignity in Cassandra's story so she got really into gardening and dedicated her elderly life to getting a perfect score from the gardening club. She died in her garden with a platinum aspiration meter a few hours after her son got married.

If they meet a Sim they want to marry, they get married again.
Trent asexual @PeniGriffin? Trent???? Not in my game, not at all

Only in Drama Acres, Justpetro! In Drama Acres he's asexual, and neuroatypical in a way I can't quite pin down. In Strangetown he and Trisha are perpetually stoned. In Widespot he's a little flaky but on a thicker part of the bell curve. And in the Genderswapped Uberhood, River Traveller is so capable, I'm wondering if the only thing that's really wrong with Trent is that he's in the wrong body!

I'd love to see Trent perpetually stoned