RUPTURE, REPAIR, & THE GOD WE THINK WE KNOW

Healthy relationships are not relationships without rupture. Parents misunderstand children. Spouses misread one another. Friends disappoint. Therapists miss cues. Human beings are complicated creatures trying to understand one another through layers of history, temperament, neurochemistry, and experience. What distinguishes a sturdy relationship from a fragile one is often not whether rupture occurs, but what happens afterward.

Psychotherapy research supports this. When misunderstandings between therapist and client are recognized, explored, and repaired, the therapeutic relationship can actually deepen. The relationship becomes stronger not because nothing went wrong, but because something went wrong—and connection survived. The Alter Rebbe offers a striking metaphor in Iggeres HaTeshuvah: a rope that has been severed and then retied becomes doubled at the knot, drawing the two ends closer together. Teshuvah can work this way. So can human relationships. Sometimes rupture, honestly repaired, creates a closeness that untested harmony never could.

Developmental psychology tells a similar story. D. W. Winnicott famously described the “good enough mother.” Healthy caregiving does not require perfect attunement. Mother and baby repeatedly move through moments of connection, mismatch, and reconnection. Gradually, the child learns something profound: disconnection does not necessarily mean abandonment. That lesson may eventually influence our relationship with God. Attachment research suggests that human beings often experience God through some of the same psychological systems involved in close relationships. This does not mean Hashem is merely a projection of our parents. But our nervous systems develop long before our theology does.

Someone raised with reliable love may find Divine love easier to imagine. Someone raised with inconsistency may intellectually believe that Hashem loves them while emotionally fearing that love can disappear. Harsh authority may cause yiras Shamayim to feel more like terror than awe. Divine silence may awaken an old childhood conclusion: I have been forgotten. Sometimes what appears to be defective emunah is actually attachment history wearing religious clothing. Yet attachment history is not destiny. Research on “earned secure attachment” shows that adults can develop greater security through healthy relationships, reflection, and therapy. The nervous system can learn new relational expectations.

Torah gives us language for this process. Hashem is Avinu Malkeinu—our Father and our King: intimacy together with transcendence. Yeshayahu compares Divine faithfulness to a mother who cannot forget her nursing child. Yet Tanach also permits protest. David cries, “Why, Hashem, do You stand far away?” Torah speaks openly about hester panim, the hiding of the Divine face.

Our nervous systems are excellent alarm systems but poor theologians. Feeling abandoned does not necessarily mean we have been abandoned. Ya’akov embodies this paradox. He wrestles through the night and emerges injured, limping toward sunrise. Yet it is precisely through that struggle that he receives the name Yisroel. We are not named for a people who never struggled with God. We are named for one who wrestled, remained engaged, and continued forward. Perhaps the avodah is not acquiring more belief. Perhaps it is separating belief from biography.

ENJOY MY SUNO SONG – The Road Back – An Elul Anthem

Teshuvah carries the same relational meaning. Its root, shuv, means “return.” Rambam teaches that genuine teshuvah requires truth: confession, regret, responsibility, and behavioral change. Repair is not pretending nothing happened. Repair without accountability is merely reunion.

Perhaps this is the deeper work of Elul: asking not only, “Do I believe in Hashem?” but “Who is the God my nervous system thinks it knows?” The unreliable parent is not Avinu. The frightening authority figure is not Malkeinu. The person who withdrew love when we disappointed them is not the Master of the Universe. Psychotherapy can help clean that window. So can Torah, prayer, loving relationships, and repeated experiences of disagreement that do not end in rejection. Mature emunah may therefore be less about never experiencing rupture and more about remaining in relationship through it. We may question. We may protest. We may limp. But there remains a road back.

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With Gratitude,

Rus Devorah

Selected References

• Cherniak, A. D., et al. (2021). Attachment theory and religion. Current Opinion in Psychology, 40, 126–130.
• Eubanks, C. F., Muran, J. C., & Safran, J. D. (2018). Alliance rupture repair: A meta-analysis. Psychotherapy, 55, 508–519.
• Granqvist, P., et al. (2012). God as an attachment figure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 804–818.
• Sasson Shoshan, T., Chaki-Binon, H., & Abu-Raiya, H. (2024). Attachment to God, divine struggles, and psychological well-being among Muslims and Jews in Israel. Journal of Religion and Health, 63, 2501–2522.
• Torah sources: Bereishis 32:25–32; Devarim 31:17–18; Yeshayahu 49:15; Tehillim 10:1, 51:19; Berachos 34b; Rambam, Hilchos Teshuvah 1–2; Tanya, Iggeres HaTeshuvah, ch. 9.