GIRLS FEEL THE FEAR AND WALK IN ANYWAY SAYS JUDGE LYNN TOLER

Welcome And Relationship Regrets

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to Relentlessly That Girl. And today we have Judge Lynn Toler with us. And Judge Toller, I'm wondering, um, has there have you ever seen any relationships where you think they should have stuck together?

SPEAKER_03 0:12

I've seen a lot of uh of relationships on divorce court that I think should have stuck together. Uh and I think a lot of them came to me just for advice. You know what I mean? They didn't know what to do, things weren't going right. So they they came, they just said, let's let's get her opinion on things. So I gave a lot of advice on how to stay together. More more than that than anything.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Wait, was wait, were there ever any cases where like people just decided not to get divorced after?

SPEAKER_03 0:37

Yeah, divorce court, well, all we were doing was uh parceling out uh money. We don't actually give a divorce on the show. So, like if they have an item, like the yellow couch that they wanted to fight over in a divorce, that we would separate that out and we would we would uh have the the uh them come before us and we would decide who got the yellow couch. Oh so it wasn't that complicated. And then some then we started doing shows like Before Your Vows, Keep Us Together, because people like my advice. And so I'd have people come on trying to stay together as opposed to trying to separate.

What Divorce Court Really Decides

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Wait, yeah. What's like the craziest like thing kind of you've seen on your show? Like what was like the craziest thing people kind of wanted to fight over?

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Well, the craziest thing people wanted to fight over, I'm not sure the craziest thing I saw was a guy came to the show trying to steal his own baby from the mother and he was in an she was in another state.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

And isn't that just like custody battle kind of?

SPEAKER_03 1:44

It is a custody battle by a thing, but he didn't know what he was doing. And he thought if he signed a petition saying I want my kid, that's all he had to do. And he tried to steal the kid off the set, and we had to call LAPD and take him away. I mean, people were running around, babysitter ran into the bathroom, he followed her in there. It was a mess.

A Wild Custody Moment On Set

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Okay, so um, one of the things my show was about is kind of it's for young girls to try to kind of figure out what they want to do with their futures. So I was kind of curious, like going back, how you decided you wanted, well, not even a judge, even before that, how you decided you wanted to be like a lawyer in the first place.

SPEAKER_03 2:23

You know, it was it was kind of a process of elimination. My parents had insisted that my sister and I both become physicians. And that's what I went to school to do. You went to med school? Uh no, I went to I went to college with the intention of going to med school eventually, but I fooled around in college so much that I could didn't have the prerequisite to get into medical school. So what I decided to do, my parent, I called my dad and I said, Daddy, I can't get into medical school. What do I do? He says, I don't know what you're gonna do, but if you stop going to c go into grad school, if you don't go to grad school, I'm not giving you any more money. And I wasn't ready to work. So I I I went and took the LSATs and got into law school so my father wouldn't cut me off. A use story story.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

You just took them willy-nilly? Like willy-nilly. Because nowadays it's like people do like hours and hours and hours of prayer.

SPEAKER_03 3:12

They didn't do that back in my day, but this is I'm talking the 70s. So this is, you know, the dinosaurs had just cleared out. And so, you know.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

So that's what you decided on? Wait, how'd you get into Harvard in the first place?

SPEAKER_03 3:25

It was just like a lot of I I did well, I did well on standardized testing. I did did very well on the on the SATs, and I had a heavy uh heavy backwork. I call it backwork. I did, I had volunteered more hours than anybody else in the city of Columbus at the at the uh local children's hospital. I was the most valuable gymnast. I was, you know, I ran track, I I threw shot put at my size, but I had a lot of lot of underneath that fact, and then my SATs were good, were really good.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Okay. Um, how'd you kind of um transition from a lawyer to a judge?

SPEAKER_03 4:05

You just do it. Well, back back in Ohio, you're elected. And as long as you've been a lawyer for six years and you're in good standing with the Supreme Court, you can run for election. And I was 33 years old. I was sick of being a lawyer because being a lawyer was a lot of long hours, a lot of work, and I had just had a baby, and I was like, look, this is too much. And uh a local judge in my district where my suburb was had retired. She was a municipal judge, and I said, Listen, I want that woman's job. And I went and got that woman's job.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Didn't you win by a lot of votes? Like six votes or something.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

I won by six votes on the uh yes. I won by six votes.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

How many people vote for it?

SPEAKER_03 4:43

It was about uh 15,000, and I won by six votes.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

That's close.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Very close. On election night, it was one vote. We had two recounts. It went from one vote to three votes to six votes.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Was that stressful?

SPEAKER_03 4:58

Extremely.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

How'd you feel when you won?

SPEAKER_03 5:04

I was numb because you worked so hard and so long, and I was doing the polling, and I was out running from polls to polls and entering all this kind of stuff. I was just exhausted and went to bed. And then I kind of held my breath because one vote, I didn't know if that was gonna hold up. So I was kind of really calm about it because I was, well, maybe I won, maybe I didn't,

From Ohio Judge To TV

SPEAKER_03 5:26

you know.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Okay. So you went from just like a municipal judge to a divorce, divorce lawyer. How does that work?

SPEAKER_03 5:32

I I didn't become a divorce lawyer. What happened was I was sitting there. Or lawyer. Judge. Judge. That's that's okay. I uh I was on the bench in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and I got a phone call from Fox on a Monday, and they said, Could you send us a tape? We heard about you that you're interesting. Can you send us a tape? I sent them a tape. They got it on Wednesday. I was in LA on Friday, and they were interviewing me for a job called Power of Attorney, where they wanted a judge on TV. They had one already, but he wasn't poppy enough. They like you live and poppy. Yeah. And I was live and poppy. And uh I got that job. That job only lasted four months. And then five years later, when divorce court became available, they called me and said, Would you like divorce court? And I said, Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

And when you started divorce court, how did that feel?

SPEAKER_03 6:22

Was it like it was so much fun? I mean, it was just it was just exciting. The hardest part was sitting in that chair for two hours and getting that hair and makeup done. That used to make me crazy. That used to have a lot of time. Oh, they had they did all that just for like hair and makeup, and I would be in there for two hours. I couldn't take it. They'd have to give me breaks, you know. It was just, but uh the filming itself was just was an absolute pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Really? Wait, was it more like you were like actually in like a regular court or was it like a whole set?

SPEAKER_03 6:55

It was a whole set.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

But was it like actually like you would do like the actual legal stuff and people would get their like um decisions at the end of it?

SPEAKER_03 7:05

Decision at the end of it was binding.

unknown 7:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 7:08

Yeah, they they agreed to have it as a binding decision. I serve as an arbitrator, you know, and so they can agree to have a final judgment made by this arbitrator be uh stand up in court, and so it would.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Would I love that?

Dating Advice: Slow And Private

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Um, what is some dating advice for the young girls watching?

SPEAKER_03 7:26

Uh you know, I was dating back again with the dinosaurs. So everything is different these days. I mean, I even talked to my sons who are in their 30s, and everything they do is so different. I mean, there's all the swiping left, right, and the other way. I I'm I'm all for slow. Okay. I'm all for slow and calm and cool and and and getting to know people and taking your time and and if you find somebody you like, I mean if you really like him, don't be all on the internet with him. Don't post all of your what's happening, what's going on. People will will poke at your relationship. Y'all keep it private.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Yeah, that's what's fun about it, though.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

I know I well, I'm old. And I've said that a number of times. However, everything old does not need to be discarded. And all, and it's just you'd be surprised. I don't know, how much it helps a relationship not to have all of those eyes on it.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

I mean, it probably does help a lot.

SPEAKER_03 8:37

And I know nobody's gonna listen to me in your age. I mean, I really do, because a lot of your life is lived on there and how you express yourself and what you do. So I understand that, but even just little adjustments here and there, let's not be so open about this, or let's not be so open about that. You know, work your relationship like a job and it'll pay well.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Yeah, I was talking to this guy, like literally showed my friends his photo. They're like, no, done.

SPEAKER_03 9:07

See, you can't do that. You you you you you can't date by committee. You have to date an individual, one individual to one individual. The committee never gets it right. And they always have, you know, they always thinking Brad Pitt. You know what I mean? You see all those guys around all the time. Brad Pitt got somebody. At least I heard.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Is your show more for like older people, or is it like, or like not older, like 30s or something, or is it more?

SPEAKER_03 9:37

This child said older people like 30s. I may have to get up from here. I'll be 67 next month. Older people like 30s. Lord have mercy. Let me recover. Let me recover.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Older people do watch my show more regularly than younger people. But those 30-year-olds are young to me.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

I haven't had a lot of life lived.

SPEAKER_03 10:13

That's what 17 is for. You know what I mean? It's it's for figuring stuff out. You make little boo-boos here and there. There's nothing wrong with it. You know, embrace them.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Wait, yeah, but like how like how old do you think your audience is, kind of? I'm curious. Uh, I did well in what was it?

SPEAKER_03 10:30

The what is the demographic to something to 54, 50, 35 to 54 demographics, something like that.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Yeah, because I don't know if people like over, I don't know, like 60 year dating anymore.

SPEAKER_03 10:44

No, but they do like divorce corp just because they like the the drama and the go-ins on. And everybody always comes up to me and says, My mother loves your show. So older women really.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Oh, but you meant they were the ones getting divorced. I was like, Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 10:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

I mean, it kind of does. Like their kids grow up, they're like, done. That point. I've seen it happen. Wait, were the people when you did divorce group, were they like really young or were they older?

SPEAKER_03 11:09

All ages.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Really?

SPEAKER_03 11:11

Really super young. I would have the 21-year-olds in there, and I always was worried about them. I remember I had a 21-year-old, she had four kids, and with this same guy, they'd been together in high school, and not and both of them were still conducting business like they were in high school. Wait, they had four kids? At 21, they started dating in high school, and they never got out of high school, sort of. They were just conducting their relationships like they were still there, and it wasn't going well. So they came to see me.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

No, when I was younger and I heard about like the 16-year-olds having kids. Well, I mean, uh objectively I'm only a little bit older, but then I heard about them having kids. I was like, wait, that's kind of older. Like when I was like 14 or something, I was like, oh, that's kind of old enough. Now I'm like, no, like what I can't even I can barely take care of my dog.

SPEAKER_03 11:58

Right, exactly. It that's early to be having children.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

I don't know how some people do it.

SPEAKER_03 12:03

I I don't. Listen, I had my first baby at 30. I don't know how old I was. 32?

SPEAKER_01 12:12

That's like a good age, though.

SPEAKER_03 12:13

Yeah, 32. I had my second one at 35. I I thought that was good. I got all my youthful. I was very I'm an impatient person, but I was more impatient when I was younger. As you get older, you slow down, everything's cool, you're like, I ain't gonna worry about that anymore. And uh I think if I had had babies before my 30s, I don't think I think they would have turned out okay, but I just don't I think it would have been a rougher time.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Yeah, no, seriously, a dog is a

Modern Dating Apps And Ghosting

SPEAKER_00 12:40

lot for me. I just got a dog at like the beginning of the year. Dog is so much for me. That's more than enough.

SPEAKER_03 12:45

Then let me ask you a question since you're so young and you're out there at the current day. Somebody described dating to me in these days as an apocalyptic wasteland.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

It's a mess.

SPEAKER_03 12:56

Is it is it a hot mess? Yes. And what does that mess look like?

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Well, okay, first of all, it's like 99% on like Snapchat, like Tinder, but for 15-year-olds. It's not cute, first of all, genuinely. So I was talking to this guy for like a month. He was my friend at the time, ex-boyfriend. They dated for like a week, so it wasn't like serious. So she gave me permission to like like hang out with him.

SPEAKER_03 13:25

Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

And then, so we were talking for a month, whatever. Like, I feel like that's well, also, there's like talking stages and stuff now. Back then, back then it was probably like you'd it's meet each other once and be like, Oh, I like you. We should start dating. I don't know how that worked.

SPEAKER_03 13:38

No, we we start, we would talk. We would talk.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Yeah, we're talking. Well, now there's a dumb name for it. Um what's the dumb name for it? Talking stages, situationship. So much.

SPEAKER_03 13:50

Yeah, everything has a title now.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Yeah. Anyway, so I was talking to this guy for like a month, and then he just he ghosted me for like three days, and I was so confused. I was like, oh, well, okay. Must have not been interesting enough. Whatever. I don't really care. But then three, like literally, I see he sent me like three chats in a row, and it was genuinely just like messages about he how he liked me so much, and then he asked me to be his girlfriend at the end of it.

SPEAKER_03 14:17

Maybe he's been confused. I'm confused too. Um maybe he's took some time to think about it before he said it. He wanted to, he wanted to consider what he was gonna say.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

He said he was nervous. Oh, and then well, like fast forward a little bit. We stopped talking, but we're still chill, whatever. We're all hanging out. Me, his friend, like one of my friends, whatever. He tries to get with my friend who he dated for like a week in front of me. That was crazy.

SPEAKER_03 14:52

And so you're done with that, right? Oh, so completely and utterly done. Okay. So good for you.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Like this guy. Oh, and and like that that whole thing ruined my friendship with her because she was like, Well, you try to get with a guy I dated for a week.

SPEAKER_03 15:11

For a week.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

She gave me permission to date him. The whole thing's a mess.

SPEAKER_03 15:17

A mess. An absolute mess.

Put The Phone Down And Connect

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Do you hear about stuff like that a lot?

SPEAKER_03 15:23

I don't know what y'all doing out there. I really don't. Uh, I listened to my son some. They're they're they're a little bit older than you, so their their stuff is kind of like in between my stuff and your stuff, you know, but it there's a lot of it's not that Snapchat stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

It's all the dating apps. Which I think I don't know if they're much better.

SPEAKER_03 15:43

I don't, I don't either. I really don't. I really don't. I would, I I tried to get in person as much as I could. I think we're getting so distanced from each other, you know. And it's it's important to have personal interpersonal contact that is not digitized.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

I don't know if people can have actual conversations anymore. It's like there's the whole literacy crisis, there's everything. People don't know how to talk to each other.

SPEAKER_03 16:10

They have difficulty with it. They have difficulty with it.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

No, it's crazy. How do you think people should like, how do you what do you think people should do to break out of that cycle?

SPEAKER_03 16:20

You practice being kind, you know, and practice talking to people when you're out. When you go to the store and you and and you, hey, how you doing? To the cashier lady, you know, always create the atmosphere you would like to be in. And so if you're friendly and if you're up front and you talk to people and you smile, you know, not because you're a girl, you should smile. Like, I hate that. Telling me a girl, you should smile. But uh, but I tend to smile anyway. Oh, same. Yeah, I got I'm a smiler, yeah, and I could see that you're a smiler too. But but you create the atmosphere that you want. And so you make a decision that you're gonna put the phone down. You make a decision that you're gonna make eye contact, you make the decision that you're gonna be.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

I know my parents are gonna hear you say, like literally, just hear you say, put the phone down, and they're just gonna play that clip over and over and over again in a loop. Over and over in a loop. There, this is this is the one thing they're just gonna show me for the rest of my life. My dad, he's he hates the phones. He's genuinely, he's gonna hear them be like, listener, listener.

SPEAKER_03 17:22

But it's you know, even the phone has done things to me. I used to sit down and could read for hours. I'm fine. You know, I get up and get something to drink, and I'm just reading for hours. Even now, since I do do Instagram and all that kind of stuff, my ability to sit and concentrate for hours has been interrupted. So I have had to put the phone down a little more and read more because uh that that limits your ability. You know, neoplasticity. Your brain does the easiest thing it can. And yeah, once it gets used to that dopamine loop.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Well, you probably do you know a lot of the psychology stuff because of your um partner.

SPEAKER_03 18:02

Yeah, he's he he is a font of knowledge. He really is. And my sister's a neurologist, so I'm always hearing about neuroplasticity and she did it, she did what your parents wanted her too. Oh, she did exactly. She went, I mean, boom, exactly what she was supposed to do. Went to college, went to medical school, became a neurologist, became board certified in neurology. She was a good girl. I was just, I was just that kid.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

Well, you had a show for 14 years. I did all right. That's pretty cool too.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

I did okay.

Confidence In Male Dominated Rooms

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Um, so I feel like being lawyer, especially back then, was a very, very male-dominated field. How did it feel to face that environment?

SPEAKER_03 18:40

Well, women were were were pretty much coming along then. So there was a significant number of us there. The interesting thing about uh what I did was I went into a law firm. The law firm had been around about 250 years, and I was the first black woman they ever had. And uh it was interesting for that reason. Um, although I didn't find it daunting, I didn't find it disturbing, and I don't know why. I never have a problem being the odd person out in a room. Maybe because I'm so odd that every room I'm in, I'm the odd person out. I don't know if that's the issue or not, but I never had a confidence problem being in a male-dominated field.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:26

Now I have confidence problems when I drive and stuff like that. That's stuff I'm scared of.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Oh, same.

SPEAKER_03 19:33

Really? I don't like it. That's why he's here.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

I my my mom, she has this like tank of a car and I had to drive it over here. I can only drive in like little baby cars because if I drive in a big car, I feel like I'm gonna run things.

SPEAKER_03 19:44

Run into things. Yeah, no, I I don't like it either. But you gotta you gotta concentrate on what you know, what you understand, and then you won't be so worried about what's going on around you. And and read the room, pay attention. You know what I mean? Every company, community has a culture.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:05

And and and to understand that culture and and and what's cool and what's not cool, that'll give you more a better ability to assimilate to the extent that you need to in order to uh have a good experience in that particular place.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Yeah. How do you think you're how do you think you like grow your confidence to help you assimilate into those spaces?

SPEAKER_03 20:30

You walk in the room. You you feel the fear and you walk in anyway. And you also, I used to do this because I used to be afraid of a lot of things. So what I would do is I would write what I was afraid of on a piece of paper and all the things I think might, all the negative things I think might happen. And then I would go do the thing. And then I'd have to go back and read it. And I feel silly. Because none, you know, the world didn't end, everything was fine. It was it, and then I had a running diary, an example of you're too afraid in this world. And so I had something to refer to when I'm trying to be less fearful because I spent all my life trying to be a less fearful person, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

So it's like rejection therapy, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:15

You know, you just you you you just have to immerse yourself in it and you feel the fear and do it anyway, and it lessens and lessens and lessens. But I've been afraid of so many things, I couldn't function at all, I couldn't function in a state of

Fear Of Rejection And Final Advice

SPEAKER_03 21:30

fear. So it's okay to be be afraid, yeah. Just keep stepping.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

I just kind of thought of this. Do you think like fear in relationships, like fear of like takes over like kind of all the other good emotions in a relationship, and then people kind of just jump to like divorce?

SPEAKER_03 21:47

Fear underlies a lot of what we do, and we don't really understand it. And and and it's debilitating. Uh, a lot of people don't understand it. And the fear in the relationship is you know, that fear of rejection. Yeah. That that hits the mind and hits the body like like like a physical threat. And especially when you're young and you don't you don't have a lot of bounce back yet, like this guy didn't love me. Oh my god, I'm unlovable. No, this guy, this guy just has some problems. Let me go go get another one. But uh yeah, that that fear of rejection can be very, very hard to deal with, especially when you're young, because you don't have enough experience behind you to realize, you know, falling isn't fatal.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Yeah, I hear that. Totally. Um, what are some final thoughts on what do you think um some advice for women who are going into business and STEM and just kind of male-dominated fields? What do you think is some advice you have for them?

SPEAKER_03 22:47

Remember, you have a right to be in the room.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

Don't get don't don't get thwarted by not having people around you that look like you. I had I think I had the experience when I was really, really young. Uh, my sister and I were the only two black kids in an all-white school in the 1960s. And ever since then, I think that's the best thing that ever happened to me. Because now I'm never afraid in a room I don't look like I belong in. Sometimes I don't even notice. So the more rooms you go into, the more comfortable comfortable you are in every room you're in.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

I love that. Um, do you have any like socials or anything you want to plug to?

New Podcast Plug And Goodbye

SPEAKER_03 23:25

I do. I have a new podcast called Judgment Call. And I talk about, we talk about all the things that are going on that are that that are hot in social media, and we make a judgment call from the from the perspective of a psychiatrist and a judge that have been out there for a while. And you know, at the end of each one, it's like, what did we learn today?

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Wait, what type of things do you kind of like look at?

SPEAKER_03 23:49

Everything. I mean, from dating to professionalism, all all kinds of things, you name it. And we invite people uh to write in to have us uh opine on whatever subjects they have a judgment call, they want a judgment call about.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Okay, I love that. Yeah. Anything else?

SPEAKER_03 24:10

That's it. Judge Lynn Toller, thank you. Thank you so much.