Friend gets pronouns wrong, wants to do better

DEAR HARRIETTE: I accidentally referred to my friend with the wrong pronouns, and they snapped at me! We’ve been friends for nearly a year now, but I introduced them to some new friends and used the pronoun “she” to describe something about them. I felt awful. Just as quickly as I was about to correct myself, they were already yelling at me. They lost it. They accused me of not caring enough after a year of building friendship — that is not the case at all!