Our Therapy Team

Couple/partner therapy isn't just individual therapy multiplied.  It's a unique form of therapy that benefits from a specially trained relationship therapist. At the Durham Couples' Clinic, our therapists have specific education, training, skills, and experience in working with intimate partners. To learn more about our highly skilled and sought after therapists, please take a look at our bios below.

MELISSA KROONENBERG (M.SC., RP, RMFT, CLINICAL SUPERVISOR)

For more than a decade, Melissa has worked with couples to help them better understand themselves and their relationships; strengthen connection, trust, and communication; heal from relational injuries and trauma; and find more enjoyment overall.

Melissa is passionate about helping couples create relationships that are in line with their hopes, needs, and desires. She aims to provide a non-judgmental space where people can make sense of their relationship needs and experiences.  The space we hold for the significant people in our lives is both sacred and powerful; because of that, relationship tension can be very painful, frightening, and disappointing.  Couple's therapy with Melissa can help you understand what keeps you stuck in undesirable patterns of interaction with your partner, and help you get back to a place of security, love, and desire.

Melissa also provides clinical supervision and consultation to the other therapists at the Durham Couple's Clinic.

Julia Donovan (M.A., RP)

As human beings we have a basic need for secure connection and so we create emotional bonds with romantic partners which, when strong, provide us with feelings of joy, comfort and security. On a biological level, disruptions to this attachment, be it conflict or emotional disconnection, are interpreted as a significant threat to our survival.

Whether couples are dealing with issues of intimacy, betrayal, frequent arguments or other problems of communication, Julia helps couples heal and create stronger, more secure bonds. She is passionate about providing an empathetic, authentic and non-judgmental therapeutic presence and actively helps in molding clients interactions, so they can turn to each other in vulnerability and respond to each other with love and compassionate acceptance. Even the most profound hurts can be healed and couples can rediscover the loving relationship they once had.

Kristy Cartwright (M.A., RP)

Our relationships can cause us to feel both significant happiness and distress. Differences in individuals can often lead to challenges where partners begin to feel distant or a lack of connection. Disconnection often contributes to resentment, withdrawal, defensiveness, criticism and a general feeling of being unheard or misunderstood. Couples counselling can provide you with a pathway to learn effective ways of reaching out, communicating, resolving conflict and establishing or rebuilding a foundation within your relationship that is based on love, respect and security.

Couple’s therapy with Kristy will help you to identify the patterns within the relationship that keep you and your partner feeling stuck. You will be assisted in rebuilding the connection and intimacy with your partner while also maintaining a strong sense of your self identity.

David Leung (M.A., RP, M.Div)

“It’s a myth that if you solve your problems you’ll automatically be happy.  We teach couples that they’ll never solve most of their problems” -Dr. John Gottman.

I certainly prefer to find solutions to problems in my couples work.  But in my experience, solving practical problems in relationships only goes so far.  What can go much further is an attentiveness to what is below the surface of practical problems.  What are the emotional dynamics underlying the problems?  And how do certain behaviours (ie. affection, respect, blaming, criticism…) stir the emotional world of each partner. 

My work helps partners to get to know each others emotional world.  Where are the points of connection?  Where are the sensitivities?  Where are the vulnerabilities?  When partners feel that there is understanding and sensitivity at this deeper level, a secure trust is formed.  Where this security is the ground of the relationship, couples can be happy with all sorts of problems  …and this can make it a whole lot easier to find solutions to those problems.