My [22/M] girlfriend [22/F] accidentally damaged my friend’s [21/M] laptop, and he wants me to break up with her because of it, or else he’s ending our friendship

A Redditor shared a dilemma involving their girlfriend accidentally damaging a friend’s laptop while slipping on a water spill. Despite her immediate apology and offer to cover repair costs, the friend overreacted, demanding the Redditor break up with her or risk losing their friendship. The tension is further complicated as the friend is an irreplaceable member of their competitive gaming team. Read the full story below to see how this situation unfolds.

‘ My [22/M] girlfriend [22/F] accidentally damaged my friend’s [21/M] laptop, and he wants me to break up with her because of it, or else he’s ending our friendship’

I’ve known my buddy [21/M] since I started going to university 4 years ago. My girlfriend [22/F] is my best friend of 16 years and we’ve been dating for two months. She asked to borrow his laptop to do homework, when the three of us were hanging out at his home. While carrying it she slipped on a water spill, she didn’t get hurt, but the laptop was damaged badly, albeit still repairable.

My friend started losing his s**t at my girlfriend, even though she apologized and offered to pay for the cost of the repair. I pulled him aside and asked why the hell he was freaking out. He said I needed to break up with my girlfriend because of how careless she was, or else we couldn’t be friends anymore. Then he went on a weird rant about how I shouldn’t have started dating her in the first place because I deserve better, but I think he was projecting hard about something.

It boggles my mind that he wants me to break up with her because she accidentally damaged his laptop, over his negligence in not cleaning up the spilled water. I’m not breaking up with my girlfriend, so I assume my friendship with him is over.

The thing is, he’s a member of our team [5 people including myself] for the video game [League of Legends] that we play. He’s irreplaceable, there’s no one that we know of who is equal in skill level to him, that also plays his role. We take the game very seriously by meeting up and practicing every weekend, going over our replays to see how we can get better, improve our communication, etc. I don’t want to play with him anymore, or have him on the team because of the way he handled everything. I’m not sure how, or if I should bring up what happened to my other teammates..

Tl;dr: My girlfriend asked to borrow my friend’s laptop and she slipped on a water spill while carrying it. The laptop was damaged badly but is repairable. My friend lost his s**t at my girlfriend even though she apologized and offered to pay for the cost of the repair.
He told me I needed to break up with her because of how careless she was, but then he went on some weird rant about how she didn’t deserve to date me.

He’s a member of our team for the video game that we play together, and he’s irreplaceable. I don’t want to play with him, or have him be apart of the team anymore, but I don’t know how or if I should bring that up with everyone.

Here’s the comments of Reddit users:

[Reddit User] −  You should talk to the other three people in the gaming group before he does. You want to take control of the narrative and establish that he’s behaving badly – you especially want to emphasize that your girlfriend takes full responsibility for her mistake and will pay to have the laptop repaired. Get the other folks on board with the idea that his demands are nutty and of replacing Jerkface if he won’t back down.

Then, give Jerkface a few days to calm down and get back in touch with him. Explain that his demand is unreasonable…you love your girlfriend and of course you’re not dumping her. Let him know that the offer to pay for repairs still stands and you’re open to continue gaming with him if he apologizes for his way out of line demands to break up with your girlfriend. I suspect he will back down when (if) he sees that the other players on the team are backing you up.

KittyGrewAMoustache −  Are you sure your friend doesn’t secretly love you or something?

ChazF −  You ‘friend’ sounds toxic and controlling. I’d tell him he doesn’t get to tell me who to date and if wants to stop being friends with me that’s his choice.

SandwichSiren −  You guys aren’t a military battalion, you’re a gaming group. You can find someone else to replace him. Don’t d**p your girlfriend because of your insanely unreasonable friend.

NiandraL −  Then he went on a weird rant about how I shouldn’t have dated her in the first place because I deserve better It’s pretty obvious he’s been stewing in resentment over her for a while now and this incident, in his mind, justified his feelings and gave him an excuse to express them

[Reddit User] −  He spilled and didn’t clean it up, she fell, offered to pay to fix his computer and he’s mad?? I’m you’re girlfriend I’m telling him to go eff himself, it’s his fault she fell in the first place. He was negligent. I’d pay him nothing. If he doesn’t want to be your friend anymore that’s on him.

AmyM326 −  Is there any chance that he might be into her? I couldn’t say what everyone else has been saying better. This dude is weird either way and sounds like a bad friend.

cherrydrpepper −  Hey, I have a gaming group like yours and have been in a situation with a team member that was ‘irreplaceable’ but also flipped the f**k out for some bizarre reason.

In my case, from a gaming standpoint, it didn’t matter how I approached our next games, it was never the same again. The perfect team mate I had before turned into an a**hole that our team couldn’t trust to cooperate with strats and became argumentative for no other reason than to just defy me or my ideas/opinions. It was disruptive to the team, caused a lot more fights and we ended up having to replace him because of his attitude anyway.

The guy in my situation had a problem where he couldn’t separate what happened socially outside the game to what we’d all been working towards and practicing for inside the game. My point here is that if being friends outside the game is a requirement for the team, then your team is already broken. Mourn it, move on and replace him.

xRoseable −  So your girlfriend accidentally broke his laptop. She did 100% the right thing offering to pay to repair it. And your friend… flips out? And says you need to choose between them? And you’re CONSIDERING IT because he plays a video game with you? Look, you don’t want this unstable individual in your life anyway. And your girlfriend… I assume you want her in your life as she is the reasonable one in the situation. You’re just going to have to choose your girlfriend over the video game (as that seems to be the sticking point for you). You can still play the game (duh) but without him in it.

OhMyItsColdToday −  and he’s irreplaceable. False. nobody is irreplaceable.