Is it me or them?

I write an email asking a not-quite-yet friend for some assistance. I wait a week after getting no reply, and wondering if I have written something that offended or annoyed them.

I am at a cocktail party, and somebody who I thought I was pretty friendly with doesn't talk to me for much of the night. I wonder if I they have heard something about me that has put them off me.

In cases like this my immediate reaction is to think that I am the problem; I have done something, said something, thought something that has caused them to not want to respond to me.

What usually happens is that they do end up writing back, even if it is after another prompt from me. They do end up talking with me, even it is at another social occasion. It wasn't actually something I had done - it was actually about them, all that was going on in their world, which has drowned out what I was looking for from them.

As a rule of thumb I would say that in 95% of cases if I get a sense that I have wronged somebody simply because they have not got back to me in a timely manner, it is because of all that they have going on - not about my offensive behaviour.

Therefore it is much more productive to make this assumption, and be right 95% of the time, then the opposite, and be stressed and wrong 95% of the time.

And as for the the 5% when it is me...well, I'm pretty sure I will find out soon enough.