I [28F] broke my partner's [31M] laptop. I feel absolutely terrible about it and want to make it right, but he refuses to let me and it is giving me anxiety.

I have been dating Brian about six months. He is a total sweetheart and I consider myself very lucky to have him. But, I made a really dumb mistake and I want to fix it, but I feel like he isn't letting me.

Basically I was taking a summer course at a community college with a web-based final project to do. Brian is a teacher and has (had) a laptop loaded down with a bunch of software that he uses for work, but also happened to be perfect for the project I was doing. He was off for summer at the time anyway, so he offered that I could borrow his laptop for the project.

I was of course very grateful for that and I was very careful with it right to the end. I had finished my project and was just waiting for the next time I saw him to bring it back. And I, very stupidly, left it sitting on my couch. Later on I came home from work and, with the lights off in my place, didn't see the computer sitting on the couch, and I plopped down onto it. The screen was cracked and had zero functionality, and the lower part was bent and cracked as well. It was a monumentally stupid thing of me to do.

I called my boyfriend right away in tears to tell him what happened and I promised him I would buy him a new one. He came over that night to have a look, and I again promised him I would buy him a new one. He didn't really get mad, which honestly kind of made me feel worse, just bummed out. He said he would take it to a friend he has who is in IT/data recovery whatever to see if there was anything salvageable from it and I made him promise to tell me how much it would be to replace as soon as he knew. Aside from the computer itself, he also had software on it for work that I know wasn't cheap.

The next few times we were together Brian didn't say anything else about the computer, and I eventually saw him with a new one. I reminded him that he was supposed to let me know how much I owed him so I can figure out how to pay him back.

Instead he told me was just going to let it go. I told him I appreciated that, but it was multiple thousands of dollars and I didn't feel right just "letting it go."

He asked me if I could afford a new high-end laptop right now and asked me to be honest, so I told him I could at least afford to pay him some every month until it is paid back. He just told me he doesn't believe in "keeping debts" on your partner in a relationship and told me not to worry about it.

It has been about two weeks since that last conversation and Brian has not said another word about it. It is an incredibly generous thing for him to do, but there is something eating at me inside because I feel like he is being too generous and I really feel a need to replace the computer I broke out of sheer stupidity.

I know he told me not to worry about it, and of course it should primarily be his decision how to fix it since the computer was his, but I really feel like I need to pay it back.

How do I get him to let me pay him back for this computer? And can I get him to understand that, even though he isn't worried about, I am, and I feel a need to myself to fix this?

TL;DR I broke my boyfriend's expensive laptop. He won't let me pay him back and it is eating at me inside. How do I get him to let me make this right?

Submitted August 24, 2021 at 06:39AM by PossibleHeight872 https://ift.tt/3B6vr1A