Coronavirus is a challenge for the young and old alike
Q I’m 30 and met a man, 36, from another country who was working in my office building on a special project.
We dated for several months, became intimate and both expressed feelings for each other. When he’d asked me to join him on a week’s vacation, I agreed, wondering if he was planning to discuss our future together while we’d be away.
We were only in the hotel four days when news on the virus started getting intense. He kept calling his parents as well as his sister, back in their city.
Our plane trip back here was filled with silence, as he only wanted to read the newspaper.
He didn’t call the next day and when I texted him, he said he was trying to figure out a lot of things. The next day he texted me he had a plane ticket to return home. I said I needed to see him in person, and talk this out. He said he was sorry, but he knew where his responsibilities were. It’s been more than two weeks, and he’s only responded to three of my emails, with abrupt excuses: “I’m sorry.” “I had no choice.” “It wasn’t about you, it’s what I had to do.” Is he using the virus as an excuse because we got too close too soon? What do you think? Dumped and Devastated
A These are extraordinary times, with extraordinary things happening. Your boyfriend of only a few months saw the signs of potential disaster affecting his own parents.
He was worried and afraid for them in case, as elderly people, they’d be vulnerable to the virus. That sense of “responsibility” shows his basic good character as a son. Your relationship was just too short for him to stay away from “home” and whatever way he might be needed.
Don’t keep emailing and asking for explanations. Tell him you hope his family is OK and that, while you feel sad about not seeing him, you wish him well.
When things settle enough for him to think about your time together, your message of understanding may elicit a decent response and possibly a chance to reconnect, at least online.
Q My husband and I are in our mid-70s. We’re active, fit and social. Yet our adult children are treating us as if we have no idea how to take care of ourselves. Initially, it was charming when a daughter said I should stay home while she gets our groceries.
But we weren’t sick. We hadn’t been in any coronavirus hot spots. Then my son said we shouldn’t come for Sunday dinner as we’d done in the past. We soon realized that they fear for our lives! How should families deal with these generational fears? We’re still here, and we don’t want to be excluded! Everything’s Different Too Soon
A Be grateful for your close relatives’ concern about you.
They’ve taken seriously the experts’ plan, in the face of mounting deaths and lack of health-care facilities in some hard-hit areas, to keep older people free of contagion whenever possible. It’s called “flattening the curve,” to slow the spread of infection, and save lives. Their preventing their own contacts from working/shopping, from passing the virus to you. Trust them. It’s necessary caution.
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