I'm in a weird situation and I need some advice. I suffer from PTSD as the result of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse as a child. I am about one month out of an abusive relationship and I'm trying to put the pieces back together right now. When I was in the process of ending said abusive relationship I got back in touch with a friend from high school who was incredibly supportive of me. She texted or called me every day just to make sure that I was okay and she told me about how she had a similar experience with someone she dated a few years back. He had treated her even worse than my ex had treated me and she'd had to get a restraining order against him.
So I happen to run into a guy I knew from high school (we were never friends but he was friends with a lot of my friends and still close with a lot of them now) and we started hanging out. Turns out this is the guy who abused my other friend. We go to the same school, have a lot of mutual friends, and train at the same dojo (he's done varying styles of martial arts for years and I am just getting started). One thing led to another and we slept together. Now I don't know what to do.
My friend had told me she doesn't care if I talk to him or anything as long as I don't mention her but I feel guilty. More importantly, now that I know what's he's done in the past I don't feel comfortable with him.
I have a very hard time letting people close to me. I go through periods where I can't even let people touch me. I've developed a horrible social anxiety because I fear everyone I meet is trying to abuse me in some way. I don't trust anyone fully not even my girlfriends or my therapists. My PTSD has been flaring up way worse than normal and the smallest things will trigger me, like random smells or tone of voice, anything that reminds me of my ex especially. This has caused problems for me because I'll go into self defense mode and/or panic mode and I have black outs and flashbacks regularly. I've even lost some friends because of it and I fell terribly behind in school. In short it's not going well.
I also have a hard time saying no to people and standing up for myself because I've been trained not and been told so often not to listen to my intuition or honor my own needs. So I've decided I have to break it off with this guy because of all this. He's been open about having a violent past and said he's changed and what not but even if that's not just total ******** I don't care. I don't want to take any chances right now. I don't want to end up in another situation like that. Period. At this point I'd rather be safe than sorry and what my friend has told me about him is more than a red flag. Bottom line is even if what my friend told me is ******** and he is a great guy I'm not comfortable so I have to stop seeing him.
Ordinarily I'd just ignore his calls or tell him it's not working and not to call me. However I'm having a tough time with this because I can't really avoid him. I can't switch dojos because the place I'm going right now is free and I can't afford classes at another one. I can't switch schools. And we have a lot of mutual friends and I don't want to lose their friendship because I don't want to be around him. How can I break it off with him while remaining civil enough to avoid drama with our mutual friends and keep going to the same dojo?
One of our mutual friends told him about what I was going through after the abusive relationship and she didn't know he had a violent past or anything so I'm not mad at her but I feel like now that he knows how vulnerable I am he can use that to his advantage and maybe I'm paranoid thinking like this but from what my friend told me about him I'm not. I'm thinking of just telling him that I am in a strange place in my life right now and I've been through a lot and having a sexual relationship with someone is not good for me at the moment and just leaving it there. Does this seem like a good idea?