My story - and a question

First of all, I’m not qualified in any way to analyze a person. The suspicion that I might be in the fangs of a Narc only came to me after reading up on his puzzling and often hurtful and denigrating behavior.
We met time ago, we are both members of the same group of friends, and have long been flirting here and there. He even sent some messages, once we were going to meet up – with friends – but he stood us up. Later he told me he was with company, but things didn’t work out. More about her later.
After he moved close to my home, a mere 2 miles away, he told me he would show me his house. I asked him a couple of times about it, and finally he invited me over, and then took me for dinner. He always seemed a very shy guy and I didn’t know much about him. But we had fun and I went again to his house a couple of days later. We hit it off. But he told me that since his work kept him away from home all week (he works in a different city and is home only on weekends), he was hesitant to get into a relationship. He would need, in any case, somebody willing to be flexible, since he had to combine family (both parents in their 80’s still living), plus friends and a woman into just a short weekend. I said we could try, and so we did.
He was hot cold from the get go, sex was disappointing from the get go, I many times had the feeling he was “reserving” himself, and there was a lot of frustration for me. But we got along so great. Over time, I started helping him with repairs on his newly acquired house, and before I knew it, we would spend the whole weekend together. I would go home only to feed my dogs and let them out. He started to resent even those sho9rt times away. I was introduced to family and friends, and all was ok, except for those comments. He wanted me to grow my hair. He wanted to be given a choice of several shirts if we were to go out. We would not walk together into places where our mutual friends would be. Slowly I got a feeling that I wasn’t quite good enough, or he had other interests. But when, we spent all his free time in town together.
Then he started to have a male friend of his coming over to help with the home repairs. And that is when I first saw him getting abusive with that friend. He would fly in a rage over nothing, yell and scream. The friend was obviously used to it, but I was unsettled and tried to talk to him about it. He never was good taking criticism, and told me that was just the way he is under pressure, when I insisted, he told me he was not listening to me, he would listen if I had anything intelligent to say, but as it was, he was zoning out. From here it was all downhill and very puzzling. His son came to town Valentines weekend of last year, and he said he would have no time for me. So I made my own plans. But, he invited me over on Sunday and had a rose and chocolates for me. We started to have fights. He would yell and get verbally abusive, and I would often get scared and offended and would head home. The next day he would apologize, or I would crawl back. One day after a fight, he proposed. He did it again. Both times only 3 months into the relationship. I was not sure about him, so I told him to ask me again in a year. Alcohol made its appearance, he would always drink and got me into it quite nicely. So many times I would just not know if he really didn’t say something offensive – or did he.
He wanted to have a house warming party and I worked hard to make it happen. The day of the party, friends and his family came, and the lady mentioned above showed up - in a bikini. When she saw me, she made an exit a few minutes later, saying she had to pick somebody up at the airport – in bikini? That was the first time I thought he had things going on behind my back. Then we had to go places where he knew women in bikini would be – and he treated me so bad, leaving me standing, carrying our bags by myself, being nasty just out of sight of our friends.
The fights got more frequent and then he disappeared on me for over 24 hours. On a weekend. I got panicked, not knowing what happened. When he turned up, he laughed and said now he knew how to push my buttons. About this time, he got much more controlling. I was not allowed any longer to go dancing by myself, meet friends by myself, he made me give up many good friends. Then the gym. Then I wasn’t even ok to go for dinner with coworkers – at my boss’ invitation for his first anniversary with the company. All was yelling and demeaning, verbal abuse and hanging up. Also saw that he was active on social media, when he said he could not answer my call because he had been sleeping. It all started to never add up, and he always grew very critical at me again. When we would first get together again, he would be like a kid in a candy store, hugging me and being so sweet and loving. But that would always fade in a couple of weeks.
And even though we both started to try hard not to fight, of course, it did happen again. Second separation was 3 weeks. The third a full 6. The present one is going on 6, but on week 5 sharp, he showed up at the club where we both hang with friends – with a new gf. And as he had been hiding me for months, he came in hand in hand with her. Yep, she’s a mutual acquaintance. And he kept staring blatantly at me. We had been texting earlier that same day, he could have well warned me about the new chick. But he wanted to see how hurt I would be. And that’s when I saw the evil in his face. A good friend of mine saw it too, she said she saw the pure devil. That was last Friday. Sunday he showed up with her for a birthday of a mutual friend. I sent him a text saying I finally saw his real face and to stay away from me. Monday he texts me, saying that even though I hate his guts, he wants me to keep him posted about the health issues of a family member of mine. I have not answered and went NC.
Here is my question: Should I continue to go to the places I always went, even knowing I see him – and her – and PRETEND I don’t see them and don’t care, or should I stay away. Not really in a mood to see him, but I am scared of being isolated and losing contact with all my friends. They see his actions as a social faux pas (btw, one of his characteristics is that he is not very good at gauging social situations) , but they don’t see a Narc, of course. The last time we broke up, he got physical, grabbing and shaking me when all I wanted was to leave his yelling and offending.
I am committed to my recovery, but I am not sure if to lay low and lose contact with many of my friends – and sitting at home alone on weekends, or risk seeing him. Advise, please