Big Spring Herald Weekend

Couples in crisis must ‘Commit or Quit’ in WE tv reality series

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When couples are stuck and can’t decide whether to marry or move on, they need help. That’s where Judge Lynn Toler comes in.

In WE tv’s “Commit or Quit,” which premieres Thursday, May 12, the ex-municipal judge and former co-host of “Marriage Bootcamp” enters the lives of couples in stasis and evaluates their relationsh­ip based on interviews with them, family and friends, and video gleaned from cameras planted in their home. She’ll then render her decision – if it’s to stay together, she’ll marry them on the spot; if not, then they break up. No going back to how it was.

The issues she encounters are varied, ranging from poor communicat­ion and infidelity to addiction and prison. Some fight just to fight while others are just plain angry, with or without any apparent reason. And finding the source of any anger can help heal the relationsh­ip.

“People who are in the business of being angry with each other just because they’re angry, so much has gone on,” she says. “If you can’t track it to something, you can’t resolve the something that’s making them angry. But if you can track your anger to ‘Oh, I used to have a boyfriend who used to do this to me, which reminds me of what he’s doing.’ Or, ‘I used to have a woman who ...’ or ‘I’m mad ever since the time she ... and I never got over it.’ If you can track it to something, you can ... have an opportunit­y to work with them.”

At the end of the process, Toler has all the couples write both their wedding vows and a goodbye letter, with the content and their reactions while writing them telling her a lot about whether they’re going to make it.

“They almost always cry when they write their goodbye letters,” Toler says, “because they’re forced to think about what the end really means. And when they write the wedding vows, they’re forced to think about what being married really means. And these days, people don’t usually think about being married beyond like, what color should our patterns be at the wedding. To write the vows requires you to think it through.”

 ?? ?? Judge Lynn Toler
Judge Lynn Toler

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