A friend recently asked me how many exes I have. Confidently, I replied, “2.87.”

Of course, I am no King Solomon and did not halve my last “ex.” (We’ll define an ex in a second here.) Or, more likely, quarter her. Instead, exes can be defined on a weighted scale. We may assign a weight of 1 to the person who you probably should’ve and maybe did call your “girlfriend” or “boyfriend.” By that, I mean the person lasted (probably) three months or more and the duration of romance included mutual confessions of affection and possibly some public hand-holding or kissing (maybe more!! Insert winking emoji). Fiancé(e)s are given a score of a 2, and ex-spouses (or partners that lasted over half a decade) are given a 3. Naturally, the scale is sliding and up for debate in philosophical circles.

To accumulate my whopping score of 2.87 exes, I summed the skeletons of some half-dozen flings over the last decade (it’s frightening when I can speak of my life in decades). I have never had a complete ex; that is, an ex-girlfriend whose weight would be 1. My highest assigned value would be given to someone who I do conversationally call my “ex” because she is, in fact, the most significant ex of my past…but ex- what? Her score is a 0.66. We dated, yes, but we didn’t date date. She just meant a lot to me. In fact, she meant 0.66 to me of what a theoretical actual girlfriend would mean to me. (I’m half-joking.)