"I'm a percentage person."

Sometimes when I'm making plans with friends and I've got something else going on or my attendance depends on another person's absence (sorry! but you know how it goes. sometimes you just don't want to hang with some people), I'll say "I'm 85% sure I'm coming," or "I dunno, only feeling like 9% tonight." It's easier for me AND you, and sort of more fun as well. But I never really thought of relationships (romantic ones, friendships, and business relationships if that's part of your life) in those terms...until I was reading this advice column and the columnist broke down the question as a percent. Which I liked.

The question was "How important is sex for a relationship and what can you do if it stops?"

And his answer was as follows (partially; the full answer is on his site, linked above):

... let me further add that I’m a percentage person. I’ll put a percentage on anything. (Will I make out with her after dinner? 12%.) I’m especially fond of a really low percentage shot, like, was Angie flirting with me? 1.2%. This all gets me to the fact that I’ve thought about the sex question a lot. Which isn’t really a sex or no sex question, but more of a “mutually agreed upon amount needed” question. If two people both don’t like to get it on and find each other.. more power to them. So I’m going to stick with what I’ve got until someone proves me other wise: 50%. Yup, a straight 50. Why? It’s a bit like when a company buys a share of another company. And it is always 49 or 51 percent What the news heads like to call “the controlling share”. It’s only two percent away between the two but a world of difference in what it means to the dynamic on the whole. But at 50, neither works without the other right down the middle. of course there is always fluctuation, so I’ll give my sex math a +/- 4%. It’s also like a test. If you aced the “gets along” half but skipped the sex section (sextion? pow!) you would still fail, and vice versa. Never mind the fact that a relationship with unbalanced sex is just a friend who hangs around too much and stresses you out. No fun there. So yea. that’s my answer, it’s 50 percent of the test. To all those people who are thinking “but we get along so well, so I can look past it…” well, you can’t. Same goes for the “he’s a total loser but the sex is ammmaaaazing..” Anyway you score it, you still get an F for the class. It might hold together for a bit, but either disproportionate situation will eventually erode your personal chunk of love.

Wow. What a good, objective way to look at such a problem. I might take a cue for my own advice-giving! How would you think of your problems if you had to display them in graph form?