She decided to stop wanting to date because I thought about staying friends with my ex

I need some general opinions here, I'm not looking for validation but trying to figure out how much I messed up or if it was just a bad moment that spiraled into this.

I was seeing a woman for a while, we were taking it slow so we didn't call it dating, but we really did all the cute couple things together. We both agreed it will end up being dating, but she just wanted to not rush anything, because she did that in her past relationships and that didn't turn out well.

This woman used to have two ex-boyfriends, one of them emotionally and physically cheated on her. In the other, after a year or so, she noticed the same patterns and called it quits. She's someone who believes in listening to your gut feeling, whereas I believe your gut feeling is a culmination of good and bad experiences in your life and isn't always a good decision maker.

My ex (mind you, this was more like a FWB thing, because while we dated, we never really had romantic relationships and so it never was a committed, loving relationship), contacted me again after 3 months. She is going through some stuff so I felt empathetic and wanted to at least hear her out, but also find out why it didn't work out between us (it ended abruptly). I believe in open and transparent communication, so I decided to immediately tell her and find out what she thinks about it.

In my naivete, I thought I could stay friends with my ex, or at least maintain the contact. I thought it could work if I am completely transparent, so I always told her everything I discussed with her. But before I decided to even maintain the contact, I wanted to hear her thoughts on it and if she'd be okay with it - trying to reassure her by promising to drop any contact if she wishes so.

Her response was always that I should decide on my own and that she doesn't want to influence it. I thought that was sweet, but it seems I misunderstood and didn't realize that she, deep down, expected me to cut any contact.

In the end, nothing happened between me and my ex. I cut contact, but for her this was already a fundamental level of trust that was broken, and now she can't see dating as a possibility anymore. She wants to stay friends though, which I think I'll accept, but I really wanted a life with her. The whole thing is more confusing to me because of how good our time together was. There was never a fundamental moral disagreement, we were always very cuddly and just in general very cute together.

Now I am perplexed. I wonder if someone went through something similar here and how that turned out in the end? Am I wrong to think that she might be a little overly cautious about things?