From the perspective I'm in, W built a cadre of "friends" in our neighborhood whom she spun tails of abuse and horrible living conditions to in order to build support for carrying on her A with OM. Were we ever to have a hope of reconciliation, NC would also apply to everyone she used to enable her behavior - at least from my pov.

It would almost be beneficial to have a "clean slate" so to speak, building friends of your M and not friends that aren't 100% supportive of your M.

Then again... my W probably has other issues besides just enabling friends, but she conditions people to enable her behavior by telling them wildly skewed versions of what has occurred in our R. YMMV.

My opinion though is that a clean slate is a good thing.

"You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."