Pc and Xbox crossplay nightmare of annoyance. Not working. Help requested.

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I'm having major trouble trying to play Sea of Thieves with my friend via cross-play.

My friend plays on PlayStation with the Xbox app. I'm on PC Steam.
I was required to make an Xbox account to hopefully crossplay with him.

He can connect to other PC players. He sees me in gamebar as a friend.
I can't connect to Xbox players. I see him in gamebar as a friend.
We see each other in Xbox gamebar friends. I don't see him as a friend in SoT.
We see the group invite overlay when initializing a group-invite, but when we accept the invite the group never gets formed.

I've tried just about everything I can think of (privacy settings, startup order, enable everything, etc). Anyone go through something similar?

[Keyrala]

Check the in game crew options make sure the option to allow friends joining your games is enabled.