Wow...nice discussion!

So, my therapist has explicitly said -- repeatedly -- that the relationship with her is / should be key to my 'healing'. And, that while everyone may not need it, given my particular set of issues, she believes it's the relationship that'll matter. She brings up the relationship with her no matter what other relationships I'm talking about (friends, family, lovers etc) and asks how that particular stuff I'm talking about would apply in my relationship to her. She's also repeatedly questioned as to how I can't seem to see that she cares beyond her professional competence -- it seems to be one of her pet peeves with me.

Having said that, in my not-so-humble opinion, she has SUCKED at dealing with ruptures (fitting the definition lolagrace provided earlier)-- and yes, she has used the word ruptures and like Unaluna's T, has mentioned that it's repair that's important and not the ruptures themselves. Except I don't feel like any one of our ruptures -- of which there have been two major ones and plenty of not-so-minor and minor ones -- have ever been resolved.

I have brought them in the session itself + the next session + in the next few sessions + much later and to no avail. Her response is either silence or blaming it on my mother or total memory loss ('Can you jog my memory about what happened?' even thought it was the previous session and her memory's pretty solid in general). And, nothing ever changes really.

So, yeah. I have no idea what to make of it.

In terms of the articles about ruptures etc -- the couple I've read actually fit parts of what both lolagrace and stopdog mentioned. So, therapists did mention more ruptures but they also rated the alliance much higher than clients did. Then again, I have not by any means done any serious lit search on it -- so, can't really speak to it.

Personally, my experience is somewhat similar to ruh roh's -- T doesn't think there are any ruptures when I actually say I'm upset etc and it ends up going absolutely nowhere.

At this point, it's not even about my hurt feelings or anything related to my emotions. I have begun to wonder if it's a matter of skill / competence with her after all -- in general, as well, I think I used to tend to primarily give importance to how I felt when ruptures happened but more and more, I'm beginning to think that regardless of any emotions involved on the part of either the T or the client or even the strength of the therapeutic alliance, it's just skill and experience of the T that matters in how they handle ruptures......or, maybe not.

To sum up, this stuff drives me crazy -- it feels like it's a part of Therapy 101 and I can't believe that my T who is otherwise rather insightful and has helped me in measurable ways, keeps f-ing up on something so basic. It's mind-boggling honestly. With a T who generally sucked, I would have no trouble believing that they also f-up how they handle ruptures. But, I truly can't understand how someone who otherwise knows their stuff, can falter repeatedly in this rather basic aspect.