Can you and your abusive ex still have mutual friends?

[WaterBird]

My emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend and I tried being "just friends" but I have recently seen sense, realised he hasn't changed, and blocked him. We have one mutual friend who is not close to either of us to know our past history, and thinks that we are still friends.
I don't want to stir drama with either of them, so have kept quiet, but I have found myself withdrawing from the mutual friend. Do you think it's possible that we can both still be friends with him, and him be none the wiser?

My ex was abusive, physically and mentally. We met through friends. All of my friends are still friends with him, I don't like it but I can't pick and choose who others are friends with. He would try and stir trouble occasionally, once accused me of smashing his windows on his car (I really have better things to do - like moving on with my own life) so I laughed in his face and hes never caused me any problems since.

I'm so sorry your ex treated you like that.
I'm impressed that you can still stay friends with his friends.

My friend has an abusive ex. He admitted it in court, there was a restraining order, etc. So friends couldn't try to say they didn't believe it or anything.

I was friends with both before. I'm not friends with him now although had to awkwardly stay civil whilst she got back with him after the restraining order ended, etc. They broke up again a few years ago so that was the end for me. But they have a lot of mutual friends as both are very social.

It can definitely be done. My friend manages fine. But it's not like she has to see him really regularly or anything. They very rarely actually cross paths as both have enough friends to avoid the other if they want to do something on a weekend, etc.

Not in my experience. Abusers can’t help but try to get others on side against you and quite soon he will start to blacken your character. They can’t help themselves I’ve seen this time and time again and the only thing that removed the stress of it was to remove myself from all mutual friends.

If you need distance from the friend, that's not wrong.

If you want to stay friends, I think it's a mistake to keep them in ignorance tho - all you need to say is "ex and I are no longer in touch, by choice" or "our break-up wasn't amicable".

But if you're not close anyway, then it shouldn't be much of an issue?

I struggle with this. My ex threatened suicide to try to control my behaviour, along side countless anger and aggression, belittling, etc.. I never told any of our mutual friends about this at the time because although i was extricating myself i had a sense of loyalty still. Now, i struggle with the realisation that they all still think he's a fine human being and that things just didn't work for us.

I'd say that I'm probably closer to the mutual friend than ex is.
I appreciate all the experiences. I think I will distance myself from him at least for now. As far as I know, my ex hasn't blackened my character yet, although if he does, our friend could be easily influenced by it, as he is the type that would just want everyone to get along.
I don't feel I can be honest about it because I blocked my ex without telling him (got sick of his crap and flakiness).

No.

I broke contact with a few people when I left my exh because of this. These friendships just become strained ime. Plus when you're recovering from abuse you need your friends to be completely supportive.

@Dudsville
Are your friends still close to him?
I've been there. Telling or not telling is a really tricky decision.
I had a couple of friends who were close to me but just knew him casually. Turns out they thought he was a twat pretty much all along, they just didn't want to tell me.

You haven't done anything wrong tho, by blocking him.

You don't have to go into great depth with the friend, just to say "trying to be friends with ex didn't work, so I've cut contact." If needs be, you can say "I don't want to get into the gory details of it all, and I hope it won't affect our friendship".

That's a great idea. I might do that.

My DSis's XH was violent to her. His best mate still happens to be married to one of my DSis's closest friends. But because there has been zero contact between my DSis and her ex, this doesn't pose her any problems at all.

I have a lot of mutual friends with my ex. We were together a long time. Whilst nobody has taken sides as such, people that know and are in my corner keep their distance form him (ie. not actively inviting him for dinner etc), but if they bump into him might have a coffee or a chat.

My mum even still buys him a xmas present (we have kids together). He isn't a bad person to anyone else, they can see his flaws and I have tried to keep it as civil as possible for the kids and people see that and follow suit.

A lot of friends "understand" some of the issues we had, but not many know the full extent, those that do don't really have anything to do with him but they were my friends (ie. not mutual ones).

Reasonably close. It's been so long now but I'm still friends with about 4 people who are friends with him. One of them asked me to help them discuss a difficult thing with him earlier this year and i just said I'm not the person for that. It reminded me that people just don't realise who he can be.