Hi all! Sorry in advance for what is going to be a longish post.
I (22F) have been seeing this guy (23M), a high school friend of mine, for just over a year. It is a FWB situation, but we both primarily enjoy the non-sexual physical intimacy. While we are compatible in many ways, he is not super open about his desires or assertive with his actions (sex is usually initiated only after we’ve been hanging out for 4-5+ hours).
Now onto the tricky bit. I was assaulted, physically and sexually, by one boy in high school and a different one in college. The problem is that my FWB is pretty much best friends with the latter, and it’s quite the elephant in the room. The short and skinny is that I ended up going to the police about what happened and they called to interview the guy who did it, who then went to multiple of our mutual friends saying that I was a bitch, liar, etc. when they didn’t even know about the situation beforehand. I don’t know for a fact, but am 99% sure that he said the same to my FWB because his behavior changed drastically around the same time everything went down. He went from regularly initiating sex to almost being scared of touching me, even though he knew before this that I’d had bad experiences (he just didn’t know who had committed them).
I am not expecting this to be a long-term situation, but I want to work on my communication skills without dumping everything that happened on him in detail. I suppose I just don’t know the best way to go about having a conversation about me being okay with him being assertive and us continuing to explore our sexualities without making him feel that I’m forcing him to choose between me and his close friend. Thank you!