Mondays are for questions from young people.  In this case I can only give the answer.  You may apply your imagination to what the question was like.

Reply

Let me tell you what I think may be happening.  I think you’re right that your laziness in college isn’t a “compensation for working too hard in high school” – but I don’t think you have lost your perfectionism.  It seems to me that your obsession with being perfect is still in business, and that’s why you’ve been so lazy in college.

Perfectionists want to be perfect at whatever they turn their hands too, but they are willing to turn their hands only to what they can do perfectly.  So when they can’t be perfect, they give up.  That seems to be just what you’ve been doing, not just in schoolwork but in other matters too.  You aren’t satisfied with being the best you can.  You insist on being best, or you quit.

In high school you worked hard, because there you could be best.  Since you couldn’t be best in college, you withdrew from the competition.  Judging from your letter, the same thing has happened in your relationships.  Just because your first serious friendship with a young man wasn’t perfect, you’ve simply withdrawn from friendships with the opposite sex.

It would be a shame to find yourself someday giving up on marriage because no marriage is perfect, or on your children because no children are perfect, or on life because no life is perfect.  So I hope you won’t give up on getting over your perfectionism too.  You can do it.

Now don’t be a perfectionist about getting over perfectionism; that will take time, and progress will come little by little.  But don’t be discouraged.  God will help; counselors have a lot of experience with this problem; as you ask, I will certainly pray for you; and now that they know about you from reading this, a lot of other people will be praying for you too.