My beliefs on the "realism" aspect of this game is that this game has never actually been that realistic.
I think the slower pace of the updates skew what has and is actually happening in the game. People get hung up on what LP says about "realism" but somehow miss what the game itself has been saying.
Sophia, in the span of 13 days, which is not a long time. Has gone from a woman that didn't want to wear a bikini in front of her teenage kids (Sophia, by the way, was supposedly wild in her college days) to making out and being groped by her sons BFF.
Is that realistic? No, on both counts. Moms, especially fairly wealthy (implying they've had a pool before and/or take beach trips) and very attractive moms like Sophia, shouldn't feel any weirdness about wearing bikinis in front of their kids. Or weirdness about putting lotion on their daughter. Or weirdness about her son sitting on her lap.
Logically, she should've done those things multiple times before. There are many cases like this where Sophia does or doesn't do things that, logically, she shouldn't do or should've already done.
This game also isn't much of a "slowburn". I mean, sure, it's slow compared to other FMC games which are by and large walking-talking sex simulators but it's still, to me, not that slow. It just feels that way because of the update timeframes. As noted above, Sophia started out unrealistically conservative and prudish. Despite that having direct clashes with her backstory (wild college chick).
However, choosing to ignore the backstory issues and just going off how prudish she was at the start of the game, Sophia does something sexual almost everyday, and at least recently, in every event. From making out with her daughter, to bikini shows for her son and friend, to kissing her daughters friends, to helping 12 years olds put on condoms and letting them grope you to swapping spit with your neighbors son.
You don't go from being a prude to agreeing to that stuff in a matter of days. There are lots of sexual things besides sex, AWAM does this pretty well, much better than 99% of games, but that still doesn't mean it's slowburn.