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Friends, Frenemies & Flying Monkeys · The Voice: Breaking, Believing, Becoming

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Welcome to The Voice, where breaking, believing, and becoming finally have somewhere to be heard.
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I'm Kim Munoz, and I'm so happy that you're here.
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All right, today we're going to talk about friendships. You know,
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the good ones, the complicated ones, the women who hold us together,
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the ones who send us to therapy.
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And at this age, some of us deserve honorary psychology degrees based solely
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on surviving some of those female friendships.
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Because somewhere between high school, marriage, motherhood,
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divorce, careers, healing, church groups, Pilates studios, group texts,
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and emotional support espresso martinis, we learn a really hard truth.
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Not every woman smiling at you is happy for you.
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Truthfully, no matter your age, but especially if you're over 40 and still slightly
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confused by adult female friendships, welcome.
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Pull up a chair. You're among friends. You know what adulthood feels like to
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me sometimes? Like walking down a long emotional yellow brick road trying to
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figure out who's actually for you.
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And along the way, you meet all kinds of people.
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The 10 women, the ones who look
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strong on the outside but are quietly struggling to feel anything at all.
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The scarecrows, the people desperately searching for wisdom while making absolutely
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questionable life choices.
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The lions, the ones trying so hard to appear brave while secretly battling fear and insecurity.
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And then, of course, the witches, the good ones who help guide you,
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and the wounded ones projecting unresolved pain onto everybody they meet.
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And somewhere, flying around all of it, the flying monkeys.
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We'll get to those, too.
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My father used to say something to me growing up that I absolutely hated hearing.
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He would say, every five to ten years, you're going to look around and realize
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your friendships and relationships have changed.
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And for years, I argued with him about that, because loyalty means everything to me. It still does.
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I mean, I think if you truly love people, if you show up for them,
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if you protect the relationship, then why would it end?
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But I think part of that comes from my childhood, too.
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I was basically an only child until I was around 14, and life started blessing
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me with all of my bonus siblings, and I loved it, by the way.
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I always wanted a big family, always wanted a connection like that,
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people around the table, noise, belonging.
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I mean, if you ask anybody who knows me, they'll probably tell you I've always been the ring leader,
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from being social vice president in my college sorority and nursing school to
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my completely unofficial position in every friend group I've ever had.
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Connection has always mattered to me. It always will.
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And I think I carry that same hope into my friendships and relationships.
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I really don't treat people casually. When I love you, I love you deeply.
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And when I allow you into my world, I trust that you're there for the same reason I'm in yours.
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Now that I'm older, I do understand what my father was trying to teach me, though.
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Some relationships are lifelong, but many are seasonal.
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And as hard as it is to admit, he was right.
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And that doesn't always mean somebody failed you. Sometimes people just simply
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stop fitting the version of you you're becoming.
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That realization still stings a little bit, because part of me still wants loyalty to mean permanence.
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But maturity and life experience have taught me something different.
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They've taught me that loyalty and longevity are not always the same thing.
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Let's honor the good ones for a minute, because life would swallow some of us
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whole if we didn't have those.
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You know, the women who check on you when your world is falling apart,
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The ones who protect your name in rooms that you're not in.
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The women who pray for you without announcing it online.
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The ones who remind you who God says you are when life tries to convince you otherwise.
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And the ones who sit beside you on your kitchen floor while you cry and look completely unhinged.
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I literally have friends I can tell absolutely anything to.
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And while there may occasionally be uncontrollable laughter,
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there's never judgment.
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And they know they can do the very same with me.
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And there's something incredibly freeing about being fully yourself in a friendship.
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But that kind of friendship comes with responsibility as well,
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because real friendship isn't just support. Sometimes it's honesty.
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Sometimes it's tough love. And most times, loving someone means being willing
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to risk temporary discomfort because they need the truth more than they need enablement.
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But that, to me, that's unconditional friendship.
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Those friendships become more sacred as we age.
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Because at this point in life, nobody has time for performative relationships anymore.
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We want safe people, women we don't have to recover from after lunch.
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At this point in my life, I can tell within about 10 minutes whether lunch is
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going to nourish me or require recovery, or maybe another espresso martini.
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We want women who can hear hard things without secretly enjoying them,
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and women who clap when something good finally happens to you.
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I've always been an open book, and my relationships may be a little too open.
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But I never want people to feel alone, and I understand I can't possibly be
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the only person on the planet going through difficult or crazy seasons.
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I think that's part of how this podcast was born.
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I realized I still have so much left to say to so many people.
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And those women, they're rare. But when you find them, hold on to them tight.
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One of the strangest parts of adulthood is realizing friendships don't always
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end because somebody does something terrible.
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Sometimes it's just people not fitting anymore.
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Changes, values shift, priorities shift, tolerance shifts.
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Suddenly it's a friendship that you felt effortless in the beginning now feels exhausting.
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And that's hard because history makes us want to hold on to people longer than we probably should.
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And sometimes we stay connected to people simply because it feels familiar.
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But familiar and healthy are not always the same thing.
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But history and alignment are not always the same thing either.
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Now let's talk about the complicated ones, because some friendships aren't friendships at all.
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They're just quiet competitions, emotional investigations, energy audits,
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unpaid internships, and dysfunction.
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I mean, have you ever left a conversation with somebody and suddenly feel emotionally
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drained, insecure, and vaguely confused?
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Congratulations, you may have just encountered a frenemy.
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These are the women who compliment you, but somehow leave you feeling insulted.
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The women who support you publicly, but compete with you privately.
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And the women who ask questions they don't really care about. They just want to know.
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The women who invite you into their world only to make you feel like you don't belong in it,
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I've never fully understood women like
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that nobody's forcing you to have intimate access to someone's life so why pretend
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and one thing I'm learning as I get older is that just because I'm invited into
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a space doesn't mean I need to stay there so when something consistently disturbs
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my spirit, I've learned to stop ignoring that.
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And then we have the flying monkeys.
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Well, because every toxic person somehow comes with a small emotionally unstable support staff.
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You know, these are the women who distribute chaos, collect information,
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carry gossip like it's an Olympic sport, and they're the concerned friends.
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You know, the women who somehow know everybody's business while simultaneously
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claiming that they hate drama.
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And at this age, peace starts looking a whole lot more attractive than proximity.
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But underneath all the humor, betrayal from women really does hurt differently, doesn't it?
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Because many of us expect heartbreak and romantic relationships.
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But friendship? That's where we think we're safe.
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And if I'm Being truthful, some of my deepest wounds that I carry came from
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women that I trusted deeply.
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One of those friendships, which was not one of a long time compared to some
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of my other friendships, but it felt like I had known her my whole life from the beginning.
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It was one of those connections that felt instant.
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It felt real, safe, even sacred to me.
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But what hurts the most isn't even the betrayal itself, it's the dishonesty, the repeated lying.
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Because I gave opportunities for honesty. I created safe space for that,
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and I was very clear that without the honesty, there wouldn't be a continued friendship.
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But the lies continued anyway, and at the exact same time all of this is happening,
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I was also losing my father.
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And there's something especially heartbreaking about being wounded by someone
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you trust while you're already grieving.
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That kind of pain stays with you. Then there are the other betrayals.
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The women that you welcome into your life, into your home, around your family,
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women you genuinely love and care about simply because you've allowed them into
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your world to begin with,
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women you trusted with some of the most vulnerable parts of your life,
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who still chose to cross lines that no real woman ever should,
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and especially not a real friend.
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And when something like that happens more than once in your lifetime,
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you start realizing betrayal isn't always about love.
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Sometimes it's about access, validation, and it's most times about broken people
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making destructive choices.
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And betrayal like that changes the way you define safety
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not because it destroys your ability to
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love but because it makes you more careful about who gets access to the most
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vulnerable parts of you and if I'm being honest there are still moments where
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experiences like that make me want to pull back they make me more protective
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more cautious and they make vulnerability feel so expensive sometimes.
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There are seasons where rebuilding trust feels almost impossible,
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but God never intended for us to do life completely alone.
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At this point, if the friendship consistently requires confusion,
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chaos, detective work, and recovery naps, I'm going to assume you're probably
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not one of God's people for me.
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But what those experience also
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do is make me appreciate the genuinely good women in my life even more.
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The women who are honest, who are safe, and who never make me question where I stand with them.
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Somewhere along the way, I think God starts teaching us discernment through
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experience, not to harden us, but to help us recognize the people who are truly safe.
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Because sometimes we only fully recognize the blessing of good people after
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experiencing the pain of the wrong ones.
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And I think that's one of the hardest parts of adulthood, learning discernment without becoming hard.
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But here's what I'm still learning.
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I don't want betrayal to make me bitter. I don't want disappointment to make me hard.
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I don't want one woman or even more than one woman's lack of integrity to make
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me distrust every good woman God sends into my life.
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Because there are good women, there are loyal women, there are women who celebrate
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you genuinely, and there are women who help carry you through the hardest seasons of your life.
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And those women, they become part of your survival story.
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And truthfully, I'm incredibly blessed with so many beautiful women in my life.
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The older I get, the more I realize friendships aren't about quantity anymore.
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They're about safety, peace, honesty, and who still feels genuine when life gets hard.
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And the older I get, the more I value consistency over intensity.
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So before we go, I want you to ask yourself this.
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Who in your life consistently brings peace instead of confusion?
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Who protects your name when you're not in the room?
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And are you surrounding yourself with women who celebrate your becoming or secretly feel threatened by it?
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If friendship has ever hurt you, please remember this. Not every woman is sent
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to walk beside you forever.
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Some are lessons, some are warnings, and some, some are gifts from God disguised as girlfriends.
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Hold on to those women tightly. They make the yellow brick road a whole lot easier to walk.
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And if you're in a season of breaking, believing is coming, and becoming,
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it's already happening.
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I'll see you next time, and until then, take care of yourself and keep becoming.