The "I never thought I'd post a relationship question" question Though this may be less of a question than just my needing to talk this over...→[More:]

My birthday was in mid-August, and two weeks later, on August 28th, I went out to dinner with three friends to celebrate. This dinner had been planned and discussed via group emails a month in advance. And everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves. But there was one drawback. I'd invited four friends to come out, and the fourth one never showed up. Since I've never know this absent friend (let's call her "Grace") to not follow through on plans before, I was worried something had happened.

I emailed both her work and personal addresses that night to say we'd missed her at dinner and I hoped nothing was wrong? No response. I posted to her Facebook wall the next day with much the same kind of comment. No response. Time passed. I was busy and didn't think about it too much, but I was getting more and more concerned that Grace was stricken with some terrible personal tragedy/in traction/dead. She hadn't been on Facebook so far as her news feed registered. I tried emailing her work account again. No response. I tried calling her two nights ago. No answer, no voice mail pick up, the phone just rang. Seriously worried now. Visions of catastrophes and one nightmare (about visiting her place to find it haunted by her wistful, restless ghost who would not even stay corporeal long enough for me to talk to her) went through my mind.

Then yesterday morning I emailed a mutual friend to ask if he'd heard from Grace as I hadn't heard from her in weeks and was worried. Perhaps he said something to her, perhaps not, but in any case when I went on to Facebook again later that afternoon I found an email from her.

The email was a reply to a conversation chain of emails we'd exhanged on August 9. In it, Grace said that she'd been really upset and hurt by my last email. I don't want to post private conversation on the net, so I'll describe the email in question as my having said something to the effect "I hate it when people say X to me, it's bullshit," etc. She had taken this as an attack on her/something she'd said, and said she had needed some time to calm down because she didn't want to respond in anger.

The thing was, I wasn't referring to her or anything she'd said at all!! I was thinking of a co-worker of mine who had said something along those lines to me recently and getting a bit rant-y with him in mind.

So I emailed Grace back and explained it wasn't in reference to her or anything she'd said, and I was terribly sorry to have upset her. She hasn't responded.

I emailed the thread to another friend of mine to get her more objective opinion, and she said she thought the thread and what I said to be "innocuous". I *can* understand how Grace could have construed my comment as an attack on her, but I wish she'd said something about it at the time so I could explain rather than her being upset with me for an entire month. I had no idea she took my comment that way, I can't read minds, and when I don't know there's a problem I can't address it.

And now I'm afraid she won't be able to let this go after nursing her hurt feelings so long and that it'll ruin our friendship. Surely I've done all I can by explaining who my comment was really about and apologizing for upsetting her?