Nail on head and incredibly eloquent. Coward that I am, my hope lies in time being a healer, for those of us on both sides of the divide.

But ask me if we'll ever have mass recanting, unequivocal admittance of what we've all put eachother through and what we've lost... I'd say the chances are extremely slim.

That means the best case scenario is a gradual fading of the awkwardness and distance you describe, but never a total erasure. Things will never be quite the same again, which is why it's important to build new relationships.

It may be we come to accept the 50/70/80% restored relationships we have those formerly 100% allies. But it may equally be that the pain of not discussing how they came to be so traduced becomes too much to bear. And that's when unblighted relationships will become so important to fall back on.