See PHI78. The user was getting this message and (reasonably) interpreted it to mean "reset mail can never be sent to unverified addresses".

Reword it to be more clear, albeit an entire paragraph long. I don't really have a good solution in these cases where we'd need a whole page to explain what's happening (this, plus "we can't tell you which address you should use because an attacker could get information if we did" and "this rule defuses the risk that an opportunistic attacker may try to compromise your account after you add an email you don't own by mistake"). We could write it up separately and link to it, but I feel like that stuff tends to get out of date.

Just land somewhere in the middle.