There Are No Life Jackets In The Ocean of Separation...

...so when you try to swim across it, you will drown.

I need some feedback on this one.

I'm getting tired of re-hashing all that has done down this past month and a half between my Ex and I, but I can't help it.  It's like having tasted my first shot of Fireball, discovering something painfully awesome, and so once the first shot goes down, I go into overdrive and ultimately wake up with killer heartburn.

Here's what I want feedback on.  If someone breaks your heart - would you remain in contact with them or make every effort possible to cut off all communication in order to heal?  I'm not asking for myself - I've been there, done that, even have a couple of crappy tee shirts from the trip.
I have every reason to suspect that my ex never stopped communicating with the *cough* rhymes-with-witch *cough* that broke his heart over two years ago.  And I have every reason to suspect that it is one of the main reasons he shattered my world when he told me that, basically, he hasn't moved on from that relationship and couldn't devote himself wholly to ours.
I've been talking back and forth with a mutual friend of ours and that's when this realization hit me - that in order to heal, in order to even consider maintaining some sort of friendship with someone who has broken our heart, an ocean of time and space between both parties needs to be established for an extended period of time, no?
When I split up with the man I had been with for years, the one I thought I was going to marry, I threw that barricade up as quickly as I could, in order to save him the heartache of not getting the opportunity to move on.  Was it hard?  Of-fucking-course!  Did it always work?  No.  For the first six months he did everything he could to break me down, but I refused to let him.  Granted, I was the one who left, but he was the one who had broken my heart by refusing to put in the effort to fix everything that was wrong in our relationship.  Did I question my decision to end it?  Every day.  Sometimes, even six years later, I still do.  But deep down I know it was the right one.  Has he moved on?  Absolutely.  And he's better off for it, I'm sure.  Do I still talk to him?  Not so much, but if we cross paths, it is what it is (as much I hate that phrase,) and we have the ability to be amicable.  But it took an ocean of time and space.
When Buzzard broke my heart, I refused to contact him.  I deleted his phone number, I didn't respond to his calls or text messages for nearly seven months.  Because of the willpower I possessed, I was able to move on with my life and rebuild it, brick by brick, and I am so much better for it.  Now I can view him as a friend, there is no longing to be back with him, to be involved romantically with him because I put an ocean of time and space between us.  Sometimes I still do just because I don't want to be involved in the drama that he is such a magnet for.
So am I wrong?  Does it not make sense that in order to heal from a broken heart, hell, a broken life, we must separate ourselves from the one who caused it?