Of course, just like any relationship. I think some relationships get so broken, like a shattered vase on the floor, that the sheer effort of thinking about repairing it is too overwhelming, or you just have to acknowledge it is so broken that all you can do is acknowledge the pieces on the floor. I'm not sure the word "failure" hits the right place for this in the context of therapy.

I do wonder in therapy, though, what the definition of failure is. Or what all the possibilities are. Because I'm not sure that a decision by one or both parties that there is nothing to be worked on is a failure as opposed to the therapy has gone as far as it possibly can. Perhaps the client needs to move forward with someone else or maybe they are done with therapy, "fixed" or not.

In the case of a rupture that couldn't be repaired, I think I would ask myself the question of whether I had done everything I could to be open to the future of a relationship. For me the key would be openness, in the sense that I would ask myself if I were willing to be open to discussion without borders, to accept that the rupture happened and it wasn't completely repairable. If I still had a desire or a curiosity to see what the relationship might be like despite a sort of psychological trap door I didn't want to fall through (something that feels like a big risk to me), I would be willing to try to continue. But choosing not to continue a therapeutic relationship is not a failure to me, to the client at least. I'm not sure if I would label it as the therapist's or therapy's failure either. I don't think the paradigm of failure necessarily applies in therapy at all, even when success does.