Hi everyone! Long-ish post, thanks for reading.
I attended a neighborhood potluck-style gathering today with my husband. Our next door neighbors invited us (we’ll say G & K) to attend at A & H’s house. We are new to the area (less than 2 months here) so are excited to be meeting people around us. These are people we hope to spend more time with.
We brought homemade cookies (in a disposable aluminum tray) and an avocado bean dip in a large metal bowl (not disposable). When it was time to go, I mentioned to my husband about getting our bowl before we left. He said to leave it because there was still dip left, and I (incorrectly) assumed we should still offer to take the bowl but leave the food – my thought was that it would be rude to leave this (large) dirty dish for A to clean (it wasn’t going to fit in her fridge with everything else around), and then she would have to coordinate with G & K to get it back to us. Long story short, G asked A about getting the bowl, and she went to get another dish to transfer but started making a joke about how “oh you must never want to see us again!” which is when I started realizing that I had committed a faux pas… I said something along the lines of we had a wonderful time, thank you again for inviting us, are so excited to see you again, just trying to not leave you with a bunch of extra clean up (all genuinely true). I also left the bowl at A’s house.
We left and my husband proceeded to tell me how embarrassing the whole situation was, that I was actively rude to her by asking to take the bowl back, and that he wouldn’t be surprised if she never wants to see us again. I acknowledged that I should have listened to my husband when he said to leave the bowl. I truly didn’t know I was being rude though, and so am I now also embarrassed.
I guess my question is, having already committed one etiquette fail, how should I move forward with this? Would reaching out to her (via text) and apologizing ASAP make the situation worse/more awkward? Should I just leave it alone and hope she invites us back sometime? And then if she does, maybe apologize in person?
Thank you!