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It Was Never Really About The Sex · The Voice: Breaking, Believing, Becoming

• 0:10
  Welcome to The Voice. We're breaking, believing, and becoming finally have somewhere to be heard.
• 0:16
  I'm Kim Munoz, and I'm so happy you're here.
• 0:20
  So today, we're going to be talking about infidelity, validation,
• 0:26
  self-worth, emotional emptiness, and the chaos that happens when people try
• 0:31
  to fill internal wounds with external attention.
• 0:35
  But before anybody gets nervous or turns it off,
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  Yes, there's going to be healing in this conversation, but there'll also be
• 0:43
  some humor because honestly, if I don't laugh at some of this now,
• 0:46
  I may need to send several people an invoice for emotional damages.
• 0:51
  So grab your coffee, your journal, your holy water, whatever feels appropriate, because here we go.
• 0:59
  Infidelity. Unfortunately, I'm an expert.
• 1:03
  I've spent enough years around betrayal to practically have a graduate degree in it.
• 1:08
  It's not the degree I wanted, not one I would recommend, and the tuition was outrageous.
• 1:15
  But let me tell you something. Once you've been through infidelity,
• 1:19
  you develop investigative skills that should qualify you for federal employment.
• 1:23
  You start analyzing punctuation and text messages like it's evidence in a murder
• 1:28
  trial, and somehow, while discovering things no human being should ever have
• 1:33
  to see, you can simultaneously feel like you're the suspect.
• 1:38
  You know the difference between a normal okay and a suspicious okay.
• 1:42
  You can feel emotional distance from across the house like a trained canine unit.
• 1:49
  At one point, I could probably direct deception faster than Siri would.
• 1:56
  Can hear, hey Siri. And the thing about betrayal is, sometimes it's loud and
• 2:02
  obvious, and other times, it's so deeply compartmentalized you almost start
• 2:08
  questioning your own reality.
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  Looking back now, there was a level of compartmentalization that was honestly
• 2:16
  hard to comprehend, and even the best investigator would have been challenged
• 2:21
  trying to keep up with it.
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  I'm talking Olympic-level mental gymnastics. The man could have taught a masterclass
• 2:29
  called How to Lie While Looking Calm.
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  And the confusing part? He really was great at playing the role of husband when he was present.
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  He played that role to perfection, especially in front of friends and family.
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  And even in the moments where I knew something wasn't right,
• 2:47
  He was so convincing as a husband that I started questioning if I was the problem.
• 2:54
  That's how good he was at maintaining the image.
• 2:58
  But apparently, he was also great at being someone else to someone else at the exact same time.
• 3:05
  And for me, a person who always wants to believe the best in people,
• 3:10
  well, you convince yourself they're striving for goodness as much as you are.
• 3:14
  You believe in promises. You believe in effort. You believe in the moments that feel real.
• 3:21
  And sadly, looking back now, I think I wanted the potential more than I wanted the truth.
• 3:28
  But here's the thing. During that time, I refused to live in a constant state
• 3:33
  of investigation, because at some point, constantly searching for evidence starts
• 3:39
  stealing your peace more than the truth itself.
• 3:42
  And I just wasn't willing to spend all my energy living like that.
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  So instead, I chose to have faith, faith that what needed to be revealed eventually
• 3:52
  would be, and I handed a lot of it over to God.
• 3:57
  And God would show me exactly what I needed to see, exactly when I needed to see it.
• 4:03
  But whether I actually wanted to accept what he was showing me,
• 4:07
  that's a different story.
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  And I think eventually God was probably like, Kim, respectfully,
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  I've sent you 47 signs, 12 red flags, anxiety, discernment, a suspicious phone
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  bill, and a woman's intuition.
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  At this point, the rest is on you, babe.
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  Because the truth is, I wasn't going to leave.
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  I was trying to protect my children, protect the family unit,
• 4:34
  protect the life we built.
• 4:35
  And somewhere in all of that, I slowly stopped protecting myself.
• 4:41
  And you know, betrayal does that. It slowly shifts your focus from who you are
• 4:46
  to managing chaos you never created.
• 4:50
  You start asking questions you never used to ask. Was I not enough? Did I miss signs?
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  Was any of it real? How did we get here?
• 5:01
  And somewhere in the middle of trying to make sense of someone else's choices,
• 5:07
  I realized something huge.
• 5:09
  Infidelity is rarely just about sex.
• 5:13
  Our marriage looked connected in every way and felt connected in every way,
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  which looking back now makes the double life even harder to process.
• 5:23
  It's often about validation, ego, escapism, and people trying to fill internal
• 5:29
  voids with external attention.
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  Because people who constantly need validation will eventually start chasing
• 5:37
  feelings over foundations.
• 5:39
  And validation dependency is dangerous. Not validation itself.
• 5:44
  We all want to feel loved, desired, appreciated, chosen. That's human.
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  But when someone depends on outside attention to feel whole,
• 5:55
  that's when things start unraveling.
• 5:57
  Because validation dependency, I mean, it's basically emotional junk food.
• 6:02
  It gives temporary relief, temporary excitement, temporary ego boosts,
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  but it never actually fills the deeper void.
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  And you know, the dangerous part is, the more external validation someone needs,
• 6:17
  the less stable their internal world usually is.
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  Looking back now, I can actually see it clearly.
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  My partner was constantly talking about not feeling validated enough,
• 6:30
  at work, with friends, at different areas of life.
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  And at the time, I thought I was helping.
• 6:38
  By trying harder to make him feel seen, appreciated, supported, needed.
• 6:45
  So naturally, I did what a lot of women do. I started over-functioning.
• 6:49
  And that comes naturally to me, because I am an over-achiever.
• 6:53
  I've always reached for the stars without hesitation. I mean, it's the dreamer in me.
• 6:59
  So together, it was the perfect storm. It was a man constantly searching for
• 7:05
  validation, and a woman willing to work overtime trying to make sure he never felt the absence of it.
• 7:12
  But no amount of love, reassurance, support, or validation was ever going to be enough.
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  Because the emptiness wasn't coming from me. I became everything.
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  Emotional support staff, hype woman, therapist, prayer warrior,
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  life coach, damage control, part-time Holy Spirit assistant, for goodness sakes.
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  And somewhere in the middle of trying to keep someone else emotionally full, I was disappearing.
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  I was exhausted. I was disconnected from myself. I was running on emotional fumes.
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  To the point that eventually I didn't even recognize myself anymore.
• 7:55
  Which brings me right back to the glow-up episode.
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  That's one of the saddest parts of betrayal no one talks about.
• 8:04
  Sometimes the breaking doesn't happen all at once. Sometimes it happens slowly.
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  And tiny compromises, tiny excuses, tiny abandonments of yourself.
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  That's why some people can be deeply loved and still cheat, still lie,
• 8:21
  still seek attention, and still need more.
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  And trust me, he was deeply loved, cared for, supported, and taken care of.
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  To the point that I was over here questioning if I was the problem while simultaneously
• 8:34
  carrying the emotional weight of the relationship.
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  And how completely messed up is that? Because this isn't always about finding a better partner.
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  Most times, it's about someone desperately trying to outrun themselves.
• 8:52
  And yes, trauma can absolutely play a role.
• 8:56
  But I want to be clear, every person with childhood trauma does not become unfaithful, not even close.
• 9:03
  But unresolved trauma can absolutely create patterns where people become dependent
• 9:08
  on validation, attention, approval, or emotional escape just to regulate themselves.
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  Because sometimes the affair, it's not really about lust.
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  Sometimes it's about soothing.
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  People who grew up unseen, emotionally abandoned, overly criticized,
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  never feeling chosen, or constantly trying to earn love, can spend adulthood
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  searching for proof that they matter.
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  And if those wounds never get healed internally, people can start using outside
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  attention like emotional anesthesia.
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  And that can show up in a lot of different ways, not just infidelity.
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  One compliment feels like relief. One flirtation feels like power.
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  One person wanting them feels like worth.
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  Suddenly, it's no longer about connection. It becomes about feeding something,
• 10:01
  emotionally starving inside of them.
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  But like a lot of people, after betrayal, I started comparing myself to whoever
• 10:10
  was on the other side of it. but comparison eventually teaches you something very important.
• 10:17
  It was never really about upgrading. It was about access, ego,
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  escape, opportunity, and unresolved emptiness.
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  And can we also please retire the fantasy that every affair is some epic soulmate love story?
• 10:35
  Sometimes people aren't cross lovers. Sometimes they're just two emotionally
• 10:40
  unhealthy people validating each other's dysfunction and dim lighting.
• 10:45
  And if that sounded specific, it's because life teaches you lessons.
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  But here's the part that matters most. Trauma may explain behavior.
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  It does not excuse betrayal.
• 10:58
  Because healing is still our responsibility as adults, especially once our wounds
• 11:03
  start hurting other people in our lives.
• 11:07
  Realizing that changed me, too, because I stopped asking myself, why wasn't I enough?
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  And I started realizing some people could stand in front of the purest love
• 11:18
  in the world and still search for validation somewhere else.
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  Because the void was never about you.
• 11:25
  It's a hole inside of them that they keep trying to fill with whatever gives
• 11:30
  them their temporary high.
• 11:32
  That realization was weirdly freeing. Because if someone chooses chaos over
• 11:38
  peace, confusion over loyalty,
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  and validation over connection, That choice usually has very little to do with
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  the value of the person standing in front of them.
• 11:50
  And heartbreak will have you out here questioning your worth while God is trying
• 11:54
  to remind you who you were the entire time.
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  And maybe healing is finally believing Him, believing that your worth was never
• 12:03
  on trial just because someone else lacked the capacity to protect it.
• 12:09
  And that was both heartbreaking and freeing. Heartbreaking because you realize
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  love alone cannot heal someone who refuses to face themselves,
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  but freeing because you finally stopped carrying responsibility for wounds you didn't create.
• 12:24
  I also think infidelity forces you to confront something uncomfortable about yourself, too.
• 12:30
  Not that you caused it, not that you deserved it, but that somewhere along the
• 12:36
  way, you may have abandoned yourself trying to save the relationship.
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  You start tolerating things your younger self would have never tolerated,
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  explaining away behavior that hurt you, accepting breadcrumbs while calling it commitment.
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  And one day, you wake up emotionally exhausted, wondering when survival mode
• 12:59
  became your personality.
• 13:01
  And for me, healing eventually stopped being about understanding the betrayal.
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  It became about understanding myself.
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  What did I ignore? What did I normalize? Why was I fighting so hard to keep
• 13:14
  people who were fighting themselves?
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  Because there's a huge difference between loving someone and losing yourself
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  trying to prove you're lovable.
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  And maybe that's the real lesson here, not just that betrayal breaks hearts,
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  but that sometimes it finally breaks the illusion that your worth was ever tied
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  to someone else's ability to recognize it.
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  Before we go, I want to leave you with these thoughts to ask yourself.
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  Where in your life have you been
• 13:44
  over-functioning, trying to earn what you should have been freely given?
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  And are you abandoning yourself trying to keep peace with people who refuse
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  to heal, because love should never require you to disappear.
• 14:00
  So, if you're listening to this while questioning yourself because somebody
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  betrayed you, please hear me when I say this.
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  Someone else's inability to value loyalty is not proof that you lacked value.
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  It may take time to believe that, trust me, I know.
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  But eventually you stop needing closure from the person who broke you and start
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  finding peace in the version of yourself that survived it.
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  And that version of you is usually stronger, wiser, more discerning,
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  and far less willing to abandon yourself ever again.
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  So no, I'm not grateful for infidelity, but I am grateful that somewhere in
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  all of that breaking, God reintroduced me to myself.
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  And maybe that's what becoming actually looks like.
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  Thank you for being here with me today on The Voice and until next time,
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  take care of yourself, protect your peace, and keep becoming.