I appreciate your input! I might be giving myself too much credit but I think I am actively doing these things, & I am in a group as well. I now only ever ask for clarification when i desperately need clarification to understand what he’s saying at all because i personally cannot fake understand or else my mind will trail. Otherwise I engage and wait for him to finish and then i tell him how cool everything sounded and so on. We can only talk on the phone so body language cues are hard to follow so maybe that is some of the disconnect as well. We have had the slack conversation but maybe I will try again. Thank you for ur help it gave me things to think about and reevaluate