My first car was a 1998 Honda Accord named Penelope. She had about 150,000 miles when I got her. She was a deep plumb color, and I really loved that car. We had a good run, but Penelope passed away a few days before I was to start my first real job so I figured it was time to buy a decent car.

First, I determined my price range and then figured out what type of vehicle I wanted. After about two weeks of research, I decided to get either an Audi A4 or a Volvo XC-90 that was a couple of years old.

I drove past an imports auto dealer and saw a 2011 Silver A4 with low mileage and an SMD package that was priced about $5,700.00 below market. I pulled into the parking lot, test drove the car, and went inside to talk to the manager about pricing.

The manager’s name was Ali and he was an overweight Middle-Eastern guy who looked like he had a lot of money. He pulled up www.cars.com and compared the price of the Audi I was looking at with other Audis in the area with similar mileage and said that he was unwilling to haggle because it was priced so competitively.

I responded that I needed to see a CarFax Report before I could continue discussing price.

At this point Ali stopped me, threw his hands up in the air defensively and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. The past is the past. What does that have to do with today? You’re going to hold the car’s past against me??”

Okay, Ali didn’t really say any of that. But I don’t know how many times I have been talking to a woman with a questionable past who has a higher kill count than Ted Bundy who acted like just because something happened in the past, it cannot, and should not, be used as an indictment of her character. This proposition is divorced from reality. When you think about it, everything that anyone has done before the very moment in which they are living is “in the past.” If you can’t judge a person based on all of the things that he or she has done, what metric are you to use?

And some people have an aversion to the word “judgment.” But as far as predictors go, looking at what someone has done is the best way to figure out what they are likely to do in the future. I’m not advocating that only untainted women should be fooled with (yes I am). What I’m saying is: every woman should come with a HoFax Report, confirming the number of previous partners, age, and a history of significant sexual encounters. Here’s why:

1. Women Lie

It’s common knowledge that you can’t take a woman’s word on the number of sexual encounters she’s had. Odometers get rolled back all the time.  “Seven” can really mean 21, with 14 dudes that “didn’t count,” simply because they “weren’t in a relationship.” As I progress through my twenties, I have found that 27-year-old Becky likes to pretend that her 20-year-old self, who hosted more trains than Amtrak, never existed. Women also lie about their relationship status. We all know what it’s like to waste hours with a girl, buying her drinks and feigning interest in boring conversations about her vegan diet or her roommate’s kitty, only to find that she is uninterested because she has a boyfriend. Before I even ask you where you’re from, show me the HoFax.

2. Partner Count Is Too Blunt A Metric

Even if a girl is honest about her number, a girl who has had sex with one guy a year for the past ten years is a lot different than a girl who had sex with one guy for five years and then had sex with nine guys in the past two months.

3. Know Your Odds

Although knowing the skinny on a prospective girlfriend is the more respectable function of the HoFax Report, its utility in more hedonistic pursuits should not be undervalued. If you’ve been striking out all night and last call quickly approaches, you don’t want to waste your time with the metaphorical Jaguar; you want the 1992 Toyota Tercel because you know you can close the deal. No credit, no problem.

4. Never Trust Other Salesmen

Nine times out of ten, the only insight you have on a woman outside your friend group is what her friends tell you about her. This creates a problem since a) women lie and b) girls don’t know how to be friends. With those two factors in mind, a girl who has a desperately single friend is trying to pawn her off on some unsuspecting guy because she’s tired of listening to her friend’s problems. So when you ask a potential mark’s friends about her, you’ll undoubtedly hear about how she is so much fun and such a good girl. What you won’t hear is that she’s still hooking up with her ex-boyfriend from three years ago or that her birth control method consists of taking Plan B with her non-fat Caramel Frappuccino with no whip every morning.

5. Safety

Some cars, and women, are “sick.”  I don’t want a vehicle that will land me a highly infectious and possibly terminal disease.  At least not without a heads-up.

Bottom line, you give me the information and I will decide if I am going to continue the conversation. If Ali had told me that the Audi used to be a rental car in Bangladesh and it had been involved in a number of car wrecks, that doesn’t necessarily mean I would not have bought the car (yes it does). It just means that the amount of resources I am going to put into getting the car, and subsequently the expectations I have for the car’s performance, will be more realistic.

I’m not stupid enough to think that this principle doesn’t apply to me too. I’ve been in numerous relationships with girls I don’t like. Hell, I even almost got married one time. I like to think that those experiences don’t define me, per se, but they do provide a mountain of insight into my mindset and the approach to life that I have.

Heraclitus put it this way: character is destiny. You can only judge someone’s character based on what they have done.

Just show me the HoFax.

Read More: All Women Are Disloyal