Sex & Talking; How to Stop Avoiding Both Artwork

Partnership Aligned

When you're ready to do the inner work it takes to have the deepest of connections with your partner, this podcast will show you how. This show offers women a deep dive into the inner workings of a healthy, committed partnership. Elana Israel, Relationship and Intimacy Coach, plunges underneath the surface of everyday relationship challenges and tackles the underlying fears and pains that must be worked through in order to feel relaxed and aligned. Episodes will cover self-empowerment and authenticity, better communication, deeper intimacy and radical self-acceptance. The show will also examine how past relationships affect the present, handling difficult conversations, respectful fighting and spiritual tools that create powerful shifts. Elana has 10+ years’ background as a master’s level therapist and is a certified life coach. She also brings in her own experience and growth, sharing wisdom from both professional and personal involvement with these topics.

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Partnership Aligned

Sex & Talking; How to Stop Avoiding Both

June 22, 2026 • Elana Israel • Season 2 • Episode 7

0:00 | 9:12

Avoidance feels like keeping the peace, but it's actually marital poison.

On this episode, I talk about the fear underneath silence, what honest connection sounds like, and why communication and sex are more linked than most couples admit.

This Wednesday, June 24th at 12 p.m. Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific, I want you to sign up for my masterclass titled "Sex & Talking; How to Stop Avoiding Both."

What I cover in this class:

✔️How avoidance is slowly creating disconnect in your marriage
✔️Mindset tips for overcoming your fear of honest talking
✔️Communication tips for a more intimate relationship
✔️The connection between effective communication and satisfying sex
✔️Getting in touch with what you want & like in bed
✔️How to communicate to your partner your sexual needs
✔️How to say no to sex without shutting your partner down
✔️Creating a marriage you feel excited about again!

*** If you're listening to this after the class takes place, register anyway to get the recording emailed to you!

Learn the communication skills that will level-up your marraige in my 90 minute Masterclass: The Formula for Effective Communication for only $37

FREE: 21 Questions That Will Bring You & Your Partner Closer

IG: @partnershipaligned
Elana@partnershipaligned.com
Interested in private coaching? Book your free consult and start improving your relationship today!

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to Partnership Aligned Podcast. So today's gonna be a quick one. What I want to talk to you about is avoidance. Avoidance within marriage is like poison, okay? And the two biggest topics that I see avoidance

Why Avoidance Feels Like Poison

SPEAKER_00 0:17

come up in is honest conversations and sex. Okay. So I have had the experience of being in a marriage where I really avoided having honest conversations about what was going on with me. I also avoided having honest conversations about our sex. Um, there was a lot of avoidance going on, a lot of denial. And I know the pain of being married to someone and them not really fully knowing you and you not knowing how to let them or how to tell them or how to show them. So, like, what is it that stands in our way, right? Like if we're married to a relatively good guy, right? Like we're not talking about like abuse or addiction or anything like that, like just a normal dude, um, but there's distance between us. What is the obstacle? Like, why is that happening?

Fear Behind The Silence

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Well, the answer is fear, okay? We are afraid of conflict. We are afraid to speak our truth and it not be honored. We are afraid to tell our husband what our deepest fear is because we think that they might not understand, or we'll feel exposed, or we feel like they might judge us. Like there's all kinds of fears going on. And a lot of times we don't even take the time to stop and identify like what exactly is the fear, right? For me, the fear was like, oh, he's gonna think I'm a pain in the ass. Seriously, that was the fear for me. I had this thing that I had to work through that I had in all of my relationships, which is like, I want to be the cool chick. I want to be the wife, the girlfriend, whatever, that uh doesn't create a lot of waves. Like, I want to be, you know, different than all the other girls you've been with who have created problems for you. And like, I want to be the one that brings you peace. Okay. Now, if we just look at that motive, it's actually a really nice pure motive. The problem is that I thought that not talking is what would create the peace, which is like hysterical. Because actually, what creates peace is having the difficult conversations.

The Cool Wife Trap

SPEAKER_00 2:31

We have to learn how to say things to our partners. Things like, hey, I am feeling not good about myself right now, and I'm seeing that show up in our marriage in the way that I'm talking to you, right? Or, hey, when you sit with me at dinner, but you're on your phone, it makes me feel like I'm not important enough for you. And then I can feel myself like creating distance to protect myself, right? Like things like that. And that's just like tip of the iceberg stuff. That's not even like deep personal things that might be coming up for you based on your past relationships and your experiences. Those are just like across the board types of things that I hear. So, avoidance. Avoidance of honest conversations is avoidance of a thriving marriage. Point blank, that's what it is. This is like my specialty, okay? I have been the avoidant in the past, and now I am like the opposite of the avoidant. Now in my relationship, I'm actually in a relationship where we say everything to each other. And I want to tell you, it's not always comfortable. Like, I'm not always comfortable with having to share with my partner some of the scary things that are like deep within me that I don't want to be judged for. Um, but I say them because I have decided that having a deep, intimate, close connection with my partner is more important

What Honest Conversation Sounds Like

SPEAKER_00 3:55

to me than keeping myself small. It's more important to me than quote unquote not creating waves. It's more important to me than not having to face my fears. It is my number one goal in life is to have the most thriving, amazing, close marriage. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, well, that's just like not in the cards for us because this happened and my husband is this way and I'm this way and this. And I want to tell you bullshit. Okay. If you are in a relationship with a generally normal dude, again, not not addiction, not abuse, um, you absolutely 100% have the capacity to have the most amazing marriage. Now, the more distance you have between the two of you, the more work there is, 100%. But that's okay. Like, why be scared of the work? Now, let's move over to sex. Why am I even bringing up sex? Because one of the ways that distance plays out in marriage is through sex. The more disconnected you feel from your partner, the less sex you're gonna want to have with them. Sometimes it goes the other way around,

Choosing Intimacy Over Comfort

SPEAKER_00 5:05

where the sex has kind of fallen by the wayside. Maybe we've got a bunch of kids running around, or maybe we've become super routine, or whatever it is. And so we're feeling less connected, and men especially connect their sex. Um, and so therefore we're feeling less connected in our relationship outside the bedroom and we're not communicating. Either way, I want you to hear me when I tell you this. You deserve to have a close, intimate relationship with your partner, and you can, okay? Now, why am I saying all of this to you? Because this Wednesday in two days, I am running a workshop called Sex and Talking. Okay. This is going to be super helpful. Okay, so we're gonna start with the avoidance piece, which is what I've been talking about here. We're gonna talk about how avoidance is quietly killing your marriage. I will show you exactly how that's happening and you will understand how that's happening in your marriage. Then we're gonna talk about the fears that keep us from being able to be vulnerable with our partners, because unless we have awareness over what it is that holds us back, we're never gonna be able to move forward. It's really important. Um, and notice a lot of this work can be done without your partner. Then what we're gonna talk about is I'm gonna give you some communication skills. I'm gonna teach you what to say and how to say it in a way that actually works and that makes it much more likely for your partner to be able to hear you. And then we're gonna go right into sex, like how to talk about sex with your partner, how to get what you need in bed, um, the link between sex and communication. We're gonna talk about

How Distance Shows Up As Sex

SPEAKER_00 6:44

all of it. So the workshop is this Wednesday. It's at 12 p.m. Eastern, which is 9 a.m. Pacific time. If you are listening to this podcast and it is after Wednesday, June 24th of 2026, you can still hit the same link down below and just get the recording. This is a low, low ticket offer. I'm only charging $42 for this class, which is like insanely low. But I really want to help. I want you to show up. You can be off camera if this is a sensitive subject for you, but I want you to come or I want you to sign up and just get the recording after. It's the same link. And I want you to really sit down and think about how am I holding back from my partner and what would be available to us if I learned how to stop doing that? This work is contagious, my friends. If you learn how to communicate effectively, if you learn how to change the way that you react to your partner, if you learn how to say the things that will bring you and your partner closer, he's gonna want to do the same. Okay. And the tools that I teach you, you can teach him. So this Wednesday, June 24th at 12 p.m. Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific, I want you to sign up for the class. The link is below in the show notes, or you can go to my Instagram at partnershipaligned and my link is in the bio as well. Um, you sign up the same way to come to the class live as you do to get the recording. If you sign up, you get the recording after. I am looking forward to seeing you there. Let's

Workshop Invite Sex And Talking

SPEAKER_00 8:13

save some marriages. All right, guys. Talk to you later.