Feeling On Purpose With Judge Lynn Toler

UNLOCK THE SECRETS TO LASTING LOVE WITH JUDGE LYNN TOLER

• Judge Lynn Toler • Season 1 • Episode 9

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Unlock the secrets to healthier, more satisfying relationships with insights from Judge Lynn Toler. Drawing on my years on Divorce Court, I'll help you navigate the tough question of whether to stay or leave a relationship. Through heartfelt reflections and professional stories, we’ll explore the core of communication between partners and the importance of being "consciously married." This episode is designed to give you the tools to protect your emotional well-being and build strong, open channels where both partners feel heard and valued.

Making the decision to leave an abusive relationship is incredibly complex and requires careful planning. Together, we'll discuss the nuanced nature of domestic violence and the importance of a safe exit strategy. I'll also introduce you to Bloom 365, an organization committed to teaching young people how to build healthy relationships and avoid abusive patterns. Through courtroom stories, we’ll emphasize the power of a supportive network in helping individuals make this difficult transition.

Finally, we’ll confront the societal expectations that shape decisions about marriage and explore a "third option" that focuses on personal growth and fulfillment, even in challenging times. I’ll share insights into the self-reflection needed to understand what you truly want and deserve. By breaking these challenges into manageable steps, this episode serves as a guide for navigating relationship choices with intention, prioritizing your happiness, and embracing emotional independence for a healthier future. 

Judge Lynn Toler:

You know her as the longest presiding judge on divorce court, for more than 14 years. Marriage boot camp and many other programs. A graduate of Harvard, judge Lynn Toler is the author of my Mother's Rules Making Marriage Work and Dear Sonali Letters to the Daughter I Never had, all of which are dedicated to the proper emotion, what it is and how to find it.

Judge Lynn Toler:

Remember under your skin is a sovereign country. Don't go passing out passports all willy-nilly to people who don't belong there. Let me help you protect your emotional borders so we can all start feeling on purpose. Hey, how you doing this is Judge Lynn Tolan, another episode of my podcast, feeling on Purpose, in which the podcast dedicated to the proposition of not allowing the world to dictate how you feel. You dictate how you feel and then, if you don't feel in a way that makes you happy or gets you where you want to go, we're going to learn to feel differently. So, because feeling is a process, it's just not something that falls on you. It's something that you can learn to manage and control, and that's what we're looking to do here Now.

Judge Lynn Toler:

This one, this episode, is dedicated to love and that light lunacy that occurs when we all fall in that particular thing, because it makes you. You know, there's a lot of biology and behind that, I mean, the drive is the drive, and when you fall in love, there's a light bit of lunacy that goes on. There's the oxytocin and the vasopressin that they talk to one another, you know, and then they get together, they're exciting and it's like ooh, and you feel like whoosh, when it may or may not be the case. Having said that, the questions I get about love most often because I was the judge on divorce court was typically should I stay or should I go? And I would get these questions a lot from women, and how they would be phrased would be they would you could tell the emotional trajectory that they were on, because they would start slowly with one small thing and then it would get longer and longer and longer, just a wide range, long time of he can't hear me, he can't, he's not, he's. You know, I feel this, I feel that I feel the other thing, and the questions that I get from men are often about how do I deal with her jealousy, but I get that from women as well. But today I'm going to dedicate it to should I stay or should I go, and this is not necessarily simply a woman's issue Should I stay or should I go? And this is not necessarily simply a woman's issue Should I stay or should I go Because dudes go through that as well. So I want to talk about picking it apart, not necessarily in terms of this is how women behave and act, because you know, as people have always told me.

Judge Lynn Toler:

I'm a court law on estrogen. I don't behave like most women behave, I don't know. You know I was a doodly person until about 25. And then I had this sudden urge to procreate and I went and got Eric and went and did that. But the questions I get about that from women indicate a real hesitancy to make a decision. And I also combine that with knowledge that I got from talking to divorce attorneys who specialize in representing men and they used to tell me all the time that they are always shocked at the number of men who come in and say they didn't see it coming. Because you know, the statistic that goes around is that two thirds of divorces, or 70% of divorces, are started by women. And that's true and I've looked that up again because I don't just take that number that everybody's talking about. I looked at it again and it's interesting who's leaving who and why, and I'm gonna talk about that some other time. But it's that cascading.

Judge Lynn Toler:

I'm so very unhappy for so long and the question in my mind always was did she not speak it? Or did she speak it and he not hear it? Or did she speak it in a way that he couldn't hear it, or did she not say anything at all, that he couldn't hear it, or did she not say anything at all? And then the question becomes is he someone she could talk to? Do you make it easy for your partner to say the things that they need to say?

Judge Lynn Toler:

I had this one couple in court nicest dude in the world. She was nice too, but she was just bushy and loud and I kept saying is there something you want to say to her? Is there something you want to say to her? And he finally said yeah, and I said I'm going to stop her from talking so you can go. So if there's something to learn from just those pieces of information that I have gathered and put together is I don't think we're having the conversation enough. Whatever that conversation needs to be about how things are going and how things are feeling, you have to be consciously married, so you just can't let that information. Well, I'm unhappy.

Judge Lynn Toler:

I also remember hearing in divorce court a lot he should know. He doesn't know, and it's not because he's unkind or you know for the most part Now some people are just don't care about you. They can be loving and wonderful in the beginning, male or female, and then you can marry them and then they just turn into, you know, a person that you can't deal with. But my dogs are out there, that's why I keep looking. But you have to be able to have that conversation and be the kind of person that can receive that conversation, because that's what the talking is and the one wonderful thing my husband and I did before we got married we did a whole lot of marriage counseling and they kept talking about how to talk. Now, of course, during the course of marriage, we forgot that like three, four times and had some struggles and had some difficulties and had some problems.

Judge Lynn Toler:

And actually, looking at some of these women on divorce court that were hollering, I'm unhappy. Why can't he hear me me? Taught me a lesson about my own marriage, about my being a little bit voiceless, and we'll get to that in a little while. But when the women come to me, they tell me a very, very long story and they say should I stay or should I go? Now I never on divorce court. We have packets and packets of information on them and we have talked to other people and we also have a psychologist on staff and we always have recommendations for psychologists where they're going to, because we don't want to work. We didn't want to work folk up and just send them off. And I know my hair looks crazy, I don't say anything about it, it's just what it is.

Judge Lynn Toler:

So and we would do that. So I would give my best advice and go, and often people will write me letters and ask the same question. They will tell me about the stress and distress and how they're distraught, male and female and they'd ask me what do I do? Should I stay or should I go? Those questions I never answered directly. A because I only got one side of the story. I go those questions I never answered directly. A because I only got one side of the story. And B because I don't have any backup information.

Judge Lynn Toler:

You know, an expert I mean an opinion and a platform does not make you an expert. The information that you have and the research you've done with respect to the information you have makes you more knowledgeable. I don't want to say I'm an expert, I am knowledgeable on these issues, but I am not so knowledgeable. I don't want to say I'm an expert. I am knowledgeable on these issues, but I am not so knowledgeable, and I don't think anybody really is to be able to tell somebody exactly what they ought to do. Based upon one side of the story written in a moment in time, you can get an impression of what's occurring, but you really don't know what is occurring. You don't know.

Judge Lynn Toler:

Sometimes they will say things about what he said or what she said, and often in divorce court I would hear that and then I would talk to the other person. I said what did he just say? And she would say something else and I said you didn't hear one another. So the fact that a person writes me a letter and says their spouse, their step-in, other said A, b and C to me. They may not have said that, they may have said something else. But sometimes you hear with your fears and you hear with your history. If you get a lot of static and someone says something to you wasn't meant staticky but we could be taken as static, you read it as static and then you're off to the emotional races. So you have to take, you have to be able to have that conversation on a regular basis and know what you're talking about. So on divorce card, I had the ability to talk to both sides and I had the ability. But when this, when you asked me the question. I can't answer it. All I can do is meet it with a series of questions, and here's why I meet it with a series of questions.

Judge Lynn Toler:

If you cannot make a decision as to whether to stay in a relationship or not in a relationship, it could be for a variety of reasons. Now there are always the big hulking ugly ones, the cheating and abuse, and that is an entirely different category and I do a lot of domestic violence organizations to help stem the tide of that, and that is a different and very, very separate inquiry and one of the reasons that I don't give like oh this is horrible, you should go advice, even if it is a domestic violence situation. To go without having a plan and an understanding of where the other person is, male or female and how you are going to do that successfully is foolish. And I remember I saw some guy and he was a financial guy and a wife was calling and she was in tears and crying and upset Her husband was just doing all the wrong stuff and her voice was quivering and shaking and you could hear the fear in her voice and how little she knew about the finances and the frustration she had. And it was a financially, emotionally abusive relationship. It could have been abusive in other ways, but that's not what they were talking about. But the guy said I'm calling the police right now and I want you, I want you to call or you know, give me your number or something, or I'm. Where are you located? You need to call the police today and get out.

Judge Lynn Toler:

And what my concern is about that is you know, when you're a judge and you're in a muni court like I was, and I was a criminal judge so I would have a lot of domestic violence cases and what they gave us was a lethality chart. In other words, if you see these particular things, that the woman is pregnant, the number one cause of death for pregnant women here in the US is the guy that got them that way. If you're about to leave, the odds are that there will be a lethal outcome and about 1,800 to 2,000 women a year are killed in domestic violence situations. So when you see any of those things as a judge, if he says I want to kill myself, that is also another sign that she is in potentially a fatal situation. So you have to understand about where is she going to go? Where is she going to be safe? What is she going to do? Does she have money? What kind of things that abusers can do when a woman leaves, messing with their money, messing with the electricity or the lights. There are all kinds of things that have to be done. So to say I see you're in an abusive relationship and you ought to go right now does not acknowledge how lethal the leaving can be and how much we have to plan to do it and make sure you do it in accordance with people who know what they're doing. So I'm just going to leave that over there and, if you're curious about it, I belong to an organization called Flume 365.

Judge Lynn Toler:

We go into different schools everywhere and teach people about, teach young kids about positive relationships. In other words, we're trying to stop abusing both perpetrators and victims from the very beginning. It's not just about getting Sally to know the signs of abuse or getting Bobby to know the signs of abuse. It's about getting an abusive Sally and an abusive Bobby from ever turning into an abuser. I mean a regular Bobby and a regular Susie turning into an abuser. And it's interesting you learn so much when you go in there and talk to those kids about what's going on and what they've already seen in their houses.

Judge Lynn Toler:

But anyway, that is a separate thing. When I'm talking about what I used to call a whittled away woman, it was a woman who feels like she has no voice in the relationship that she feels. You know he's never kind to her, he's never loving she, doesn't get anything out of it. He says she's a waste of space. These are the letters that I get. I try to say I try to ask questions that determine. That will help that person walk through it.

Judge Lynn Toler:

Often they say I don't know why I stay. I'm so miserable, there's no upside. So you got to figure out why you're staying. And there's a lot of reasons why you could be staying. And the reason why it's important for you to determine why you're staying is then. That is the avenue that you have to address if you want to make a decision to leave. There's not going to be one dead bang winner decision.

Judge Lynn Toler:

My mother always used to say Lynn, you spend too much time sitting there just ruminating over should I do this, should I do that, should I do this or should I do that? Often it's not about figuring out what the one right decision is. It's often about figuring out what set of problems do you want to solve? And I know, when my husband and I weren't getting along, she says you've got, you can't stay married and stay mad. And I said, well, I don't know what to do. And then she goes, because you have to make a decision about what it is you're going to do and then do it. And there's no one thing you can do, one thing you can say, one tact you can take that's going to change everything. You have to make a decision whether you're staying or you're leaving, and then you have to solve the problems that that decision raises. The decision to leave raises problems. The decision to stay raises problems. And then if you know what those are and you can figure them out, you can solve them as you go along. So luckily I had her and I always talk about.

Judge Lynn Toler:

We had 18 months where we didn't like each other. I would have given him to any waiting woman for a dollar and she might have got some change. I mean, we were not getting along. He'd go in the room, I'd come out, I was flipping him the bird behind his back because you know I don't want to start no trouble. But we weren't getting along, but we fought our way back because we didn't fight each other, we fought the problem. And the only reason we knew what the problem was because my mother kept telling me and then I was seeing it in divorce court and then I was like, oh, oh, this is what I'm doing wrong.

Judge Lynn Toler:

And since I got on that subject, I might as well tell you, when I had moved out here to go on to television, my husband put his practice, he stopped his practice and he wanted to go into something else and we made the move out here. We rushed out here. We did it way too quickly. If you don't stop that, my Doberman is chewing on my doorframe, stop, he's got like 97 bones. But anyway, and he didn't have, you know, he'd been working all his life since he was 19. And he was sitting in a chair trying to figure out if you don't stop chewing on that, trying to figure out what his Lord, the dogs are killing me. I'm still here, don't panic, okay.

Judge Lynn Toler:

So he kind of didn't. He couldn't get started and he was struggling a little bit, because who he was is so much defined by the money he was making and the business that he ran, and it was very difficult for him. So I decided to respond to his lack of happy with being more submissive and being oh, anything you want, baby, what do you need? What do you want? What do you want? Being making myself smaller and smaller and smaller, and it didn't work. It made him madder and madder and madder and I couldn't figure it out. And the madder he got, the nicer I got the nicer, I got the madder, I got the madder he got. And then we finally figured out he didn't need to me to be yes, anything you want, because he was struggling with what he wanted. It was. He wanted that strong woman with ideas back. You know, baby, what we ought to do, or what do you think Maybe we could? He wanted that. He had gotten used to that. He didn't like it in the beginning because I got an opinion on everything, but he had gotten used to it. And then he didn't know what his problem was. And I didn't know what his problem was. And I made it worse with my own trying to figure it out and didn't know what I was doing because I didn't separate the issues. All I saw he was mad. So I'm going to be nicer, but that wasn't the issue.

Judge Lynn Toler:

So what I say to ladies that write me about should I stay or should I go? I'm so miserable I don't know why I stay. You got to figure out the why. Is it the social pressure? Often, women, we've been for generations defined as generations, millennia defined as whether or not we're married. We like to get married. There aren't shows about how to get a woman to commit. We want you, we want to get married, and you went from miss to missus and now there's even a retrenchment there. Even after all the Everybody's going back to the trad wife and people are telling us to step aside and to go back home. We are often defined in our value, told that women who don't you know our value was often defined as do I have a man and children in my life, and so if that life is unbearable but that's how you define yourself it makes it more difficult to make the decision to go.

Judge Lynn Toler:

Then there's an issue of love.

Judge Lynn Toler:

Just because somebody's treating you badly doesn't mean you don't love them. You still love them, and it's hard to leave somebody in love, even if they're not doing right by you. So you have to decide if that's it and if that is it, you have to make a decision to that you can love without being with them, and there are means and processes and procedures to do that. Then, of course, there is the history. Don't nobody like change?

Judge Lynn Toler:

The brain does not do well with change, and if you've been with someone for 15 years, the first thing is like oh my God, what is that? What do I do my entire life? Because it was a we thing, it was. He did all of these things and I did all of those things and he would find stuff for me, like he was a Geiger counter. I could never find anything. I've had four or five locksmiths out here since he's died because I can't keep up with stuff and he could. So his emotional underpinnings, which were so calm and cool, were the best way for me to deal with my emotional underpinnings, which is, you know, half in the bag out of my mind if something goes wrong, and he used to tell me too he says, the reason you can't find things and I can is because I start with the notion that it's here.

Judge Lynn Toler:

You start with the notion, oh my God, what if I never find it? Look how much trouble it will cause. So you're panicked, running about the room and I'm calmly moving things. That's an emotional lesson for you. Could also be the kids that are keeping you there. It's wonderful having a two-parent household if that two-parent household is anywhere near cool. You know what I mean.

Judge Lynn Toler:

Even when I was raised in a two-parent household, it wasn't always cool because my father was bipolar and unmedicated, but he was a good dude. And don't tell me it wasn't because you didn't know him. I got blowbacked on that. Once when I was on the breakfast club talking about it, they said you didn't know that your father was emotionally abusive and all that kind of stuff. They didn't know the guy. He had lightning going on in his head. He did not ask God to make him emotionally unmoored, he just was and he tried very, very hard to do his very best. I'm sorry I got off on that tangent, but I love that man, you know, and I can't stand it with something bad about him. He wasn't a perfect dude, but it was a two-parent household, even with all the lightning and carrying on. It was a sense of safety that you have, and it's nice to have that guy around because you know that guy isn't going to let anybody hurt you. So sometimes you stay with that guy when it is no longer cool because of the kids. So then you have to ask yourself, well, if this is the reason that I'm staying, is this cool for the children? And what are they seeing? Are they seeing abuse? Are they seeing horrible? Or would it be better to see two sane people in a separate house on different days? You can always ask yourself those questions. Sometimes you think this is the best I can do, and then my question to you is if you think you can't get anybody else, is this better than being alone? All of those things could be in play. None of them can be in play. One or two of them are going to be in play. But the point is to ask yourself specifically what are the positives of staying? What are the positives of going? You list them out, you make a list and then you have to decide which set of problems you want to solve.

Judge Lynn Toler:

I remember when I was 13 years old. I've been bizarre all my life. It appears I had an. If I could find it, I would show it to you.

Judge Lynn Toler:

I typed on those one of those typing machines with carbon paper, decision-making paper and it said here's the decision, here's the conundrum that I have, here's what the powers that be say about it. That would be parents and school and all that. Here's why I don't want to do it or why I'm upset about it. And then I had a sheet of paper where I put a line, I put the pros over here, I put the cons over there and then at the end of the page, I put don't worry about it too long. Good luck, because I was one of these people who like to pick things apart. And when you pick it apart, you can find the part that's not working and you can decide to do something else with it.

Judge Lynn Toler:

Now, if you can't make the decision to stay or go based upon a delineation of what is going well and what is not going well, what's working and not working, you can always take the third option. And the third option is what my husband and I took. It was to stay and to change. I identified what I didn't like and I put on my turn signal Click, click, click, click. You know how, when you put on your turn signal out in the world, it's like I put on my turn signal in a parking lot because I figured the more people who know where I'm headed, the less likely I'll be to will be to run into each other when I get there. I want everybody to know where I'm going. And often what happens in a marriage? You decide to take a new tack but you don't tell nobody, so they just like who is this person and what are they doing.

Judge Lynn Toler:

Same thing happened to me when I went through menopause too. I went through menopause really early, like in my 40s, and neither one of us knew what was going on. And I called my mother up one day and I said I don't know what's happening in here we're fighting about, you know, it's hot all the time and my husband's gotten really stupid. What's wrong? And I found anyway, I'm sorry I got in, I'm sorry I got into that, but when you change, everybody has to change around you. Everybody had to deal with me going through menopause.

Judge Lynn Toler:

I was going through menopause. At the same time my kids were going through, my boys were going through puberty and I tell you it made it easier because my hormones trumped the living daylights out of their hormones and my hormones were attached to a man who would do my bidding, and to money and to food, and to. I was a crazy person. He once had to take the kids and leave the house In the middle of dinner. He said we can't stay here because I did not know what was wrong with me and I could not adjust.

Judge Lynn Toler:

When I figured out what was wrong with me, I adjusted, but anyway, when we had the big thing, my mother was coaching me and she was telling me okay, you go do this and he's going to get mad about it, but you can't get weak. You can't just say, okay, fine, I don't want to have the fight, okay, fine, you said you have to let him get mad and you have to stand your ground, don't raise your voice, don't get excited, don't get ugly, and then tell me what happens. And then I would call and I would tell her what happens. And then it would just be. She says do you see what I'm trying to teach you? You cannot just tell him he needs to change. You cannot tell him what it is you don't like.

Judge Lynn Toler:

It took you 18 years to get into this mess. It's going to take you time to get out and it is a process and procedure of you deciding what you want in your marriage Not revenge, not, you know, being in charge, but being happy within the context of what the two of you got going on. And once you make those changes, he'll be required to change, but he's because he's got a different chick on his hands and that was the third option. The third option was difficult. The third option I did not think was going to work for a great deal of time. The third option took patience and was relatively painful. It really really was. But the third option allowed me to have him.

Judge Lynn Toler:

And I'm not saying that the third option is for anybody else, I'm just saying it's there and instead of looking at the entire relationship but by the time you get distressed and distraught, I was just mad. I mean, anything he did would send me into the ozone. Anything I did would send him into the ozone. But we had to back up off how I call them rebound emotions, and that's what stands in the room After you guys had an argument, you resolved it, but I said, yeah, okay, fine, but I wasn't really telling him the truth, it was a false okay. I was telling him okay because I didn't want to have a fight and I wasn't okay about it. And I stayed not okay about it and I revved that up in my head and the next thing you know we were having another problem.

Judge Lynn Toler:

So when you break it up into pieces so you can see the pieces and parts of the pain that you're in, you might be able to figure out. Either you can stay and make it okay, you can go and survive and be happy, or you can do a third option and just and it's not always available, but the more you know and the more detailed and precise you get on what's going on, the more options you have. That's my 20 cent opinion. Y'all have a good day and remember under your skin is sovereign country. Do not go handing out passports all willy nilly to people who don't belong there and most of the world does not. Bye.