Reader frets about post-pandemic relating

Dear Amy: I am feeling anxious about a return to prepandemic normality and am hoping you can help me find effective ways of navigating.

I am concerned that we have all been apart for a year, with widely varying pandemic experiences, and have grown apart with respect to our expectations for what kind of relationship or experience we want to emerge into. Some people want to go back to the world exactly as it was.

I met someone recently who launched into a 30-second commercial on what a big shot he was, reminding me of a common way of interacting before the pandemic, based on trying to prove your worth based on some external marker of success. This was jarring for me because for the past year most of my conversations have been about what each of our pandemic experiences were like, whether we had lost anyone important to us, and how we were doing in helping our loved ones get vaccinated.

I have grown accustomed over the past year to interacting with people from a place of compassion. I am anxious about interacting with people who expect me to snap back into the prepandemic, competitive, transactional approach to relationships that was common among people I knew.

Can you help me find ways to navigate a dialogue with people I haven’t seen in person in a year?

— Anxious

Dear Anxious: I appreciate this thoughtful question, as I have had my own anxieties about reentering the world — not as it was, but as it is. My own experience has been one of drawing-in, and like many people I assume that some of these changes will be permanent.

My own plan is to go slowly, realizing that others will go at a different pace.

I urge you — and all of us — to reserve judgment.

That hard-charging man has his own anxieties. He is perhaps overly eager to assert his primacy over his surroundings. He might have spent the last year struggling to keep the losses and sacrifices at bay. If he has not permitted the last year to change him, to understand his own vulnerabilities, then — so be it. You might still feel compassion for him, though, because he, like you, is experiencing the world and relating to others in the way he knows how.

Remember, too, that it takes all kinds of people to rebuild: Braggy and fearless-sounding movers and shakers, as well as people who are willing to sweep up the rubble; artists, musicians, teamsters and teachers. Anyone who expects you to “snap back” into prepandemic ways of relating will simply have to adjust to the changes you’ve made in your own life, slowly, just as you will adjust to them.

Dear Amy: My former husband was abusive toward our children. He is currently serving time (for a different offense).

I want to encourage my kids to have a relationship with him, but they refuse. They won’t visit him and don’t want to have anything to do with him.

How can I get them to have a relationship with him?

— Sad

Dear Sad: You should not try to force your children to have a relationship with someone who hurt them. Their own instincts in this regard might be better than yours.

Your children are being self-protective, and they should not be urged to override their instincts in order to have a relationship with their abuser.

Your job now should be to support their recovery, providing a stable and safe home environment, and offering them professional help if possible.

As they get older, their attitudes toward their father may change. Their choices regarding their father should always be theirs, not yours.

Dear Amy: Every year, I enjoy reading your “Best Of ” columns from 10 years before.

I’m always dying to know what became of the people who wrote to you, whether they followed your advice, and how things turned out.

— Curious

Dear Curious: My assumption is that often the people who write to me do not follow my advice. Remember, however, that this column is intended to guide/entertain/provoke everyone who reads it, not just the individuals who write in.