“were” used as a subjunctive is present or past?

Question

Given the 2 examples below:

1. I wish you were here now

2. If he were in the situation that you've been 2 weeks ago, we wouldn't have bothered about it now

The word 'were' is used as a subjunctive and my question is: To me, because of the signaling words now and 2 weeks ago, the first example is a thinking and a usage of the word 'were' in the present, though a hypothetical situation and the second example shows 'were' for a past thinking and again a hypothetical situation. Is it so? I also found the article on Wikipedia (English subjunctive - were) but I didn't find the section entitled 'Use of the past subjunctive' to be clarifying. Despite having the name of PAST SUBJUNCTIVE , the first example to me is very present. So to summarize and ask it in a more comprised way:

What are the tenses of the were subjunctive? Does a native speaker think on the tense of this verb 'were' when used as a subjunctive?

Thank you

Answer 1

Both of your example sentences are using were to refer to a present (but nonfactual) condition.

I wish you were here now.

This means that you aren't actually here now.

The second sentence is the same, but I need to rephrase it slightly for it to be grammatical (and, perhaps, to make it understandably in the present):

If he were in the same situation now that you had been 2 weeks ago, we wouldn't be bothered about it.

You will note that I added a word, move now closer to the start of the sentence, and changed a couple of tenses.