To find it hard to maintain friendships with people who have had abusive relationships?

WTAF? This sounds like you’ve been married 14 years and are going to Relate…. Not a year-long platonic friendship. 🥴

Honestly this just sounds all far too intense and too much work for such a new friendship. I’d cool it right off.

Do not get romantically involved with this man. He’s not in the right place for a healthy relationship and won’t be for some time.

I don't understand how this is happening often enough to be an issue?

The closest I've come to an argument with a friend as an adult is saying something like 'oh, that was a bit on the nose!' when they've made a rude comment about another friend... if I had a friend who wanted a row about miscommunications or everyday things I'd probably just stop bothering to arrange things.

Fair enough if they've slept with your husband or something, but life is far too short for drama with friends.

Poor you OP. Must be awful having to cope with the impact of someone else’s protective measures after an abusive relationship.

… seriously?

if this is just a friend and not some romantic involvement then you sound like a shit friend making it all about you. They’ll be used to that from their abuser tho which is why they retreat. For their physical and emotional safety

if it’s a romantic relationship you’re with the wrong person. They need someone with empathy and understanding not another potential narcissist who wants to be the focus of their attention and pandering post fight.

theyve gone into self protect mode - you either accept that’s how they deal with potentially abusive situations or you let them find a friend who does accept and support them through their trauma response

You’ve only been friends with this guy for a year, it’s supposedly platonic but you speak every day and have frequent fall-outs which seem to cause you both distress….

This isn’t a friendship, this is a fraught quasi-relationship.

Did you personally witness his abuse (& are certain it wasn't retaliation related) or has his story been verified by multiple independent sources? Please be careful, many abusers DARVO & frame themselves as victims. Creating emotionally charged situations... hooking someone.... then withdrawing is more commonly used as a mechanism of abuse, than seen as a reaction to historic trauma.

He may be genuine, but keep your wits about you. And if it turns romantic immediately Clare's Law him.

I’d say they are best avoiding you.

Honestly this reads like he is using abusive tactics on you. Stonewalling and silent treatment is not normal behaviour and is not the standard traumatic response. If he was subjected to long term abuse it’s possible he used the same tactics back to try and survive and as such doesn’t really know how to relate to people in the normal way. Cycles of abuse are pretty common - the abused goes on to abuse others.

Honestly with so many fractions I’d question whether it might be wise to take a bit of a step back from this friendship. I’ve never argued or fallen out with any of my long term Friends or more recent friends - but I had one short friendship a few years back that was similar to what you described. The lady had a lot of problems, very vocal about past trauma, and she was constantly creating so much drama within a friendship group. I took a step back for a few weeks and she blocked me on everything - it was very hurtful at the time, never got any explanation, but I can see looking back she was trying to control everyone in the group and lived off creating drama and power struggles. My life is so much simpler and calmer now!

I think I know what you mean OP. Some people here are acting like the you are in the wrong for disagreeing with him at all, but it is challenging to maintain a relationship with someone for whom a minor difference of opinion over what to have for lunch or if a movie was good can trigger a trauma response to the percieved conflict and cause them to react in ways that most people would consider disproportionate.
It's good to be sympathetic to his issues, but if your friend is putting you in a position where every time you displease him he will react like you're his abuser, then you aren't at all unreasonable to find that stressful and unsustainable in a friendship and put some distance between you until he has a better handle on his reactions.

I don't really fall out with my friends. We just talk things through and let other things go because we are probably all annoying in some way but not worth arguing about.

If you want to continue having a lot of contact with him, make sure you aren't acting as his therapist. A friendship should be based on mutual communication, respect and understanding. It should be fun.

Well, me and plenty of my friends have been in abusive relationships. It doesn't define our personalities. We don't behave oddly towards friends because someone hurt us in the past.
I'd say he's got some other issues going on.
Is the friendship particularly beneficial?
I'd say park the fact he has experienced abuse. Millions of people have. Sadly.

What was this particular disagreement about? The devil is in the detail with posts like this

If he's getting back to you in only a few days or a week I would except that. It's a reasonable amount of time - he's not ghosting you for months at s time. He's explained the affects of his abuse and I think you should except that.

I don't tend to have arguments or fallouts with my mates. To be honest. I haven't since i got out of my teens ....

The one thing i would say is that in my experience friends who have been in a fair amount of talking therapy/counseling tend to .... monologue about themselves and how they're feeling rather a lot. That can be wearing.

I'm sure it's not everybody ect ect, but in my experience this has been so.