Thanks, good advice. Yes, I downloaded Pam's spreadsheet and I have made some notes. The problem I'm having is I can't even keep my sims' needs met so it's impossible to do any of the rest of the things even when I know what it is I need to do. Every time she's chatting up a likely male, she needs to go eat or sleep or use the bathroom. And there just don't seem to be enough hours in the day to skill, romance, work, clean, etc.
The odd part is that it seems that even when my CAS sim's motive bars are all in the green, and she has positive moodlets, her aspiration is still in the red, like so:
The same doesn't seem to be true though of the EA sim that I partnered her with. I would suspect a bug of some sort, but others obviously manage to do it just fine so it must just be me.