I recall reading a bit about how in fiction writing when one wants to draw strong emotions from the reader, they choose their words one way to bring the reader in close and build a sense of intimacy, on the other hand, they choose other words when wanting to create distance between the story and the reader. When done well the reader has no idea this is going on, their emotions are moved up and down by the prose as they experience the story. I expect it works so well because as humans, we do this in our own communications instinctively. Anyway, my reaction to your post is that you are not overthinking anything, it is your friend who seems to be doing a bit to much thinking and not enough feeling. Maybe this is a sign and maybe it is not, but lets just say his choice of words does not exactly give one the warm fuzzys. There is emotional intelligence and intellectual intelligence, in a personal relationship, emotional intelligence is by far the more important of the two.

Anita: “He overly relies on dry intellect and does not integrate emotional understanding into his cognitive processing and therefore, the communication of his cognitive processing.” Awesome line, spot on and delivered with (intentionally or not?) a perfect sub current of dry intellect. I love it!