That's interesting. I think it really depends on the relationship for me. I had one ex when I was mono that (a month or two after the break up) we ended up being FWB. The thing that made it work...I was a couple of years older than him (I think he was 20 & I was 23) and although our sexual chemistry was great and we were very friendly with each other, we both knew from the beginning that this wasn't a super serious relationship or one that would last a long time. I was his first "real, grown up" girlfriend (he was also a virgin). He had been a very nerdy guy all his life and did that thing that some tall, lanky guys do when they hit their early 20s, which is flesh out from being awkwardly skinny and pointy and turn super-hot (I didn't know him during his awkward years, we met in college).
So we were bf/gf for about six months before he broke up with me. Had he not, I'd have probably broken up with him in less than a month. He was a great guy, but just...I dunno, we clearly both wanted different things, long terms.
Anyways, after a few months, neither of us had found someone new, so we were FWB for a good year after that. We parted on good terms. Ha. Now that I remember it...we were FWB for a year. I met someone I wanted to start dating seriously, so we broke it off, but still chatted. I went back to his town for a long weekend to visit friends. At one point, when I was talking to him (let's call him Mike) my best friend (who I lived with) saw me chatting with him and asked about him, so I showed her his photos on FB. She thought he was cute, and I asked if she wanted to visit with me and meet him. She did. They ended up hooking up, but I had to tell both of them about a million times that I was really, truly TOTALLY FINE with them hooking up and that they should have fun. Then I got juicy details from both of them the next day - though neither of them were my lovers, I did still care about Mike a lot and I loved my bf Allie, so I could possibly call this one of my first experiences with compersion.
Thinking about it, I'm on good terms with a number of my exes, but I think that's in part because many of them were friends before we started dating. It actually wasn't hard to transition back to friends (after having a few months of no contact, to sort of reset things), because we'd already done that before & had a dynamic already set up. The men that I'm no longer friends with after breaking up are the ones that that I didn't have any kind of relationship with before dating (and/or were jackasses/emotionally abusive while dating). We didn't have any established dynamic to fall back on, and once we stopped being in a relationship one (or both) of us realized that we didn't have enough overlapping interests/desires to stay friends after the break up.
