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The Other Women · The Voice: Breaking, Believing, Becoming

0:11
Welcome to The Voice, where breaking, believing, and becoming finally have somewhere to be heard.
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Kim Munoz, and I'm so happy that you're here.
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Today, we're going to talk about a topic women have been whispering about for generations.
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The other woman. Or, in my case, women.
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And before everybody starts clutching their pearls, this episode is not about
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publicly dragging women.
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It's also not about pretending men suddenly lose all responsibility the second
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another woman enters the picture.
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It's deeper than that. Because over the years in my life, through heartbreak, healing,
0:54
trying to understand human behavior more than just reacting to it,
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I became fascinated with this one question, who is the other woman really?
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Because when you're younger, especially the first time you experience betrayal,
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you're still living in a very romanticized version of life.
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And you imagine her differently. You imagine someone intimidating,
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beautiful, exciting, confident, some impossible woman you could never compete with.
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You picture this mysterious woman floating through life with perfect lighting
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and cinematic music behind her.
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Then eventually life humbles you, because one day you actually meet some of
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these women, and most times you walk away even more confused than when you first
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discovered they existed.
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What shocked me most over the years wasn't how extraordinary these women were,
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It was how emotionally ordinary they often seemed. And I don't mean that in
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an ugly way. I mean it sincerely.
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Some seemed deeply insecure. Some appeared emotionally immature.
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Some were lonely. Some genuinely believed all the stories they were being told.
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Some seemed desperate to feel chosen. and some, if we're being real,
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appeared completely disconnected from the impact that these situations could
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have on other people, morally bankrupt.
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And as a mother, I was one during every encounter with infidelity in my life.
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And that part always hit me differently. Because once children become part of
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the fallout, the weight of everything changes.
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And there were moments I remember thinking, are we not even doing a basic background check here, ladies?
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Like, ma'am, not even a quick Google search, a Facebook scroll, nothing?
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I even remember a face-to-face conversation I had once with one of the women,
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and I asked her, did you Google us?
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I mean, did you take a minute just to Google us?
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Because if you did, you would have clearly seen we were still married.
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And her response completely floored me. She said, well, I wasn't allowed to do that.
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And it was in that moment that I realized how much emotional fantasy can distort reality for people.
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How much control, denial, and emotional dependency some people are willing to
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accept just to keep the fantasy alive.
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And that was hard for me to understand. But over time, I realized there were
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really two categories that affected me differently.
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I had the women who were strangers, complete strangers to me,
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but then I had the women who knew my life, the women who had sat at my table,
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knew my family, knew my children,
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knew my reality, and somehow that kind of betrayal lands differently.
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But people love to simplify these situations. They want one villain,
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one innocent victim, one clean explanation.
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But life usually isn't that clean.
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Over the years, I heard versions of myself, versions of my relationships,
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and versions of my life that were so detailed and confidently presented.
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There were moments I almost thought, well, damn, maybe that was the situation.
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The creativity was impressive at times, and that's when I started realizing something important.
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A lot of people in these situations are not operating from truth,
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not internally and definitely not relationally.
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They're operating from emotional hunger, fantasy, validation, loneliness,
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escapism, ego, and people can convince themselves of almost anything when the
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story benefits what they want emotionally.
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Recently, I saw this article about North Carolina still having what people literally
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call the homewrecker law, and I'm sorry, I laughed,
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because apparently in North Carolina you can actually sue someone for interfering in your marriage,
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And somewhere out there, there's
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a woman listening to this podcast while zillowing houses in Charlotte.
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Like, imagine explaining that to your therapist. Emotionally, I'm healing.
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Financially, I'm pursuing damages.
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But jokes aside, the fact that laws like that even exist tells you something, doesn't it?
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Betrayal affects people deeply.
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Families deeply.
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Children, deeply. And while I'm definitely not giving legal advice on The Voice
6:04
podcast, it does show how emotionally devastating these experiences can be.
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What fascinated me more, over time, wasn't even the cheating.
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It really became the women. I mean, who were they really?
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Because contrary to what hurt women often imagine, the other woman usually wasn't
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some breathtaking fantasy woman living in a cloud of seduction and mystery.
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Most of the time, she was just another human being making emotionally unhealthy choices.
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And that realization healed me more than anger ever did.
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Because eventually I stopped comparing myself to other women,
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started understanding that someone else's choices were never a measurement of my worth.
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And along the way, I came across a quote that stopped me in my tracks.
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Be humble enough to know you can be replaced, but wise enough to know there's nobody else like you.
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And I think that's the balance healing eventually teaches you.
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Yes, relationships can end.
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Yes, people can leave. Yes, people can choose someone else.
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But that still doesn't erase who you are.
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It doesn't erase your heart, your loyalty, your presence, your love, your uniqueness.
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And maturity is realizing that two things can exist at once.
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Someone can fail to value you, and you can still be incredibly valuable.
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And the older I got, the less interested I became in competing with other women.
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The real question eventually became, what makes people emotionally hungry enough
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to participate in situations that hurt other people?
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And if I've learned anything over the years it's that broken people often make
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broken choices and sometimes people chase right validation in unhealthy places
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because they're starving emotionally for love, significance, attention.
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For the feeling of finally being chosen and if we're truthful most human beings
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have searched for validation somewhere they probably shouldn't have at some point in life.
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But that doesn't excuse hurtful behavior. But understanding human behavior and
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excusing it are not the same thing.
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And maybe one of the saddest realizations for me was recognizing that sometimes
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these women weren't even truly in love.
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They were attached to the fantasy, the attention,
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the pursuit, the emotional high of feeling wanted, and the heartbreaking part,
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many eventually will find themselves sitting in the exact same pain they once participated in.
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And I think life humbles all of us eventually, and I think God does too.
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Not always through punishment, but through perspective, through heartbreak,
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consequences, through finally realizing none of us are above needing grace.
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And if we're lucky, healing eventually brings us back to ourselves.
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And maybe that's the real lesson in all of this.
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Not obsessing over who hurt us, but making sure pain never turns us into someone
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who casually hurts other people too.
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So before we go, I want to leave you with a few thoughts to sit with.
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Have you ever confused being chosen with being valued?
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Have you ever accepted breadcrumbs simply because you were starving emotionally?
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And have you ever realized later that somebody else's inability to honor you
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had absolutely nothing to do with your worth?
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Because healing eventually teaches you this.
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You stop obsessing over who they chose, and you start focusing on choosing yourself. off.
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And if you're listening to this, and you've ever been the other woman,
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I hope you understand this episode was never about condemnation.
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It was about truth, and maybe even compassion.
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Because people are complicated, and lonely people make lonely choices.
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Wounded people sometimes wound other people. But I also know there are some
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people listening who genuinely don't care about the damage they've caused.
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People who justify it and minimize it or convince themselves that if they got
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what they wanted, then nobody else's pain really matters.
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And to those people, life has a way of eventually confronting all of us with ourselves.
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Because a lack of empathy may protect your conscience for a season,
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but it rarely protects your peace forever.
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Healing requires truth, and eventually all of us have to take accountability
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for the pain we've participated in, whether we caused it or carried it.
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So if you're listening to this while carrying betrayal, comparison,
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or questions about your worth, I hope you know this.
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Another person's unhealthy choices are not proof that you lacked value.
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And eventually, if you do the healing work, you stop needing to compete with other women.
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You stop needing answers for everything, and you finally realize peace was never
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going to come from fully understanding them.
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It was always going to come from understanding yourself.
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I'll see you next time, and until then, please take care of yourself,
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protect your peace, trust God with the parts you can't control, and keep becoming.