Given that I am fairly new to the development of games, I've played around with a few ideas regarding this (how to display / manage affections, kinks and other values in-game). I'm personally using floats for the various stats and modification-values that might occur. My game is built on the premise that you need to up specific stats to be allowed to do specific things to specific people. The values can turn negative, which will mean you'll have to work on getting them up, and while I haven't done it yet, I plan on having multiple random dialogues happening depending on what stats show what, and when.
For instance, you mess up something with a loved one / love interest, or similar. This takes their current stat, and lowers it by a set amount of points then and there. This might affect the overall status (depending on what the number is to start with), or it might not do anything at all, if the stat is high enough from before. However, doing something like this will also cause the stat to decrease daily - until you make a mence, either by gifts, or by saying sorry, or both. This way, your misdeed is consequential for multiple things.
1. You do something stupid / bad
2. It leads to a decrease for specific stats (let's say Love, in this case)
3. Your Love-stat, which was on 50 before your action, is now 40 (you lost 10)
4. You also set a flag, let's say "npc_mad" to True
5. Depending on what the Love-stat affects, you will most likely have lost at least one "level" of love, in this case
6. You do not say sorry, or try to console the person that day
7. Next morning (or overnight, or in the evening) you have a function for the start of or end of day, which calculates things based on what has happened, and if you still have one or more flags like the action above would set, it will modify the stat(s) accordingly.
8. "npc_mad" is still True, and you lose another 3 Love. This will continue to happen every day, until the relationship is mended
And so on and so forth.
This does also (based on the flag) affect other interactions, which again might lead to more loss of affection during the events of the day.
Random dialogue-options makes it seem slightly less repetitive, and notifications to the player reminds him/her that there are unsolved situations that should be handled. And so on.
So, I'm using both. Both integer values for relations, and flags to set specific events, states etc.
It's not a perfect system, and it will lead to some repetition and grinding, but for a dating sim / repeatable, day-to-day game, with different events happening based on stats and relations, it's a fairy obvious choice, at least to me.
