u/Careful_Feeling5093

My friend (22F) is in a situation that honestly sounds like a double life and I’m not sure how to feel about it, so I wanted outside opinions.
She’s been with her boyfriend (26M) for about 2 years. From what she’s told me, he’s a genuinely good guy—stable, kind, responsible—but emotionally not very available and there’s not really a romantic spark anymore. She says she still stays partly because of practical reasons and she thinks she loves him.
Outside of that, she’s also been involved in a lot of online connections.
When she’s bored, she goes on chat sites and ends up talking to guys. If she likes them, she moves them to other apps and keeps talking/flirting. Sometimes it turns sexual, sometimes it’s just attention and conversation. She says she enjoys the validation and feeling wanted.
Right now, there are a few main people in the picture:
One guy (in his late 30s) she met online. He’s married but says he’s in a complicated situation. They talk a lot, and he has a calm, mentor-type personality. She says he gives her a lot of emotional support, attention, and also a sexual connection. She feels really understood by him, even though they’ve never met.
Another guy (26) she recently met online. They’ve been flirting and sexting a bit. He says he doesn’t want anything serious, but there’s chemistry and she’s even said she would’ve dated him if they met under different circumstances.
There are also a couple of other guys she casually flirts with—nothing serious, just attention and fun. They don’t really have emotional depth compared to the other two.
She says she doesn’t feel forced into any of it and that she can stop talking to anyone anytime. She just likes the attention, validation, and feeling of being desired by multiple people. It also makes her feel more confident than she did growing up.
At the same time, she knows it’s messy—being in a relationship while also emotionally and sexually engaging with other people online—and she’s not sure what people would even call this situation from the outside.
I guess I’m just wondering how people would view this or what advice they’d give.

I don’t really know where to post this, but I just need to get it out somewhere.
I’m in Canada right now, but I don’t have legal status anymore. I don’t want to go into too many details because I’m honestly scared, but it’s been weighing on me so heavily and I feel like I’m living in constant anxiety.
And before anyone says it—I know this is my fault. I take full responsibility for how things got here. I’m not trying to blame the system or anyone else. But at the same time, I don’t think people understand how mental health can completely derail your life when you’re already struggling underneath.
I’ve been dealing with depression for a long time, and I have a lot of childhood trauma that I never really processed. It just kind of caught up to me all at once. From the outside, I seem completely normal—like I have everything together—but internally I’ve been falling apart.
That’s actually part of how I ended up here. I was in school and I flunked out and got dismissed. It wasn’t because I didn’t care—it was because I mentally just couldn’t keep up anymore. And everything kind of spiraled from there.
Now I feel stuck in every possible way. I can’t plan a future, I’m struggling financially, and mentally I feel drained all the time. It’s like I’m surviving day to day but not actually living.
The loneliest part is that no one in my real life knows any of this. Not fully, at least. I carry it around like everything’s fine, but deep down I’m constantly scared—about my situation, my future, and honestly just myself.
I don’t even know what I’m expecting from posting this. Maybe advice, maybe just someone who understands. I just don’t want to feel like I’m completely alone in this anymore.
Thanks for reading.