For what it's worth, Rel Panel chokes my game too. It just crashes when it starts. I pulled out all the mods, one by one, till I found the one that was crashing it when it starts, and Relationship Panel was the one that was the problem. I put them all back in except for that one, and the game worked fine. However, I should point out that I don't use any form of story progression, so your results might be different.