Perhaps here
or on another thread about this project. I thought this was vaguely familiar, but you know, I old so I didn't recognize it from just last year. You really should have opened up the older thread and continued there: is more more of the same same.
By your own count, you are now two years into programming, so I am leaving this thread.
You should be able to read your own code, see why it is doing exactly what you wrote and make some good attempt to adjust the logic to do what you meant.
If they are things about code from other threads that you never fully understood but are now part of your sketches, ask questions here as you come across them.
Conceptually this is simple. Both sides send messages, both sides react to messages sent. Both sides have switches and LEDs. You have the structure of a talker-listener sketch which both sides use.
The simulation in #26 shows what we hacked from under the umbrella and seems to work as you require. I would add some kind of acknowledgement feedback and indicators for communication failures.
a7