Look at the flags on my ID (not to mention the name in the middle).
I do not live in the USA either.
And trust me, unless you're some kind of very weird outlier (and if you are, GO TO THE NEAREST UNIVERSITY'S LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT IMMEDIATELY because you're literally a dozen different Ph.D. theses in a single pair of people!) you use sandhi if you're a native speaker. Period. You can no more avoid this than you can avoid being pulled toward the centre of the planet Earth.
This is something that is well-researched. "I talked to my partner" doesn't even qualify as anecdote!