Mail App Follow Up Email Sends to Self

If I send an email via the iOS Mail app and then go to send a follow up (meaning that the recipient didn’t respond to the initial email) when I go into sent emails and click reply it sends it to myself instead of them. Definitely not ideal.

Alternatively if I send to reply all, it sends it to me and cc's them. Also not ideal (but better).

Is there a way to accomplish this where they are the recipient and not either of the above options?

Please don't ask me to update my iOS unless you have specific proof that this will solve he problem. All the Apple reps that I spoke to tell me to update my iOS. When I ask them to test it on their own supposedly up-to-date iPhone to see if it is a UI issue rather than a bug (because his has been the Mail app's behavior for as long as I can remember and I am on my fourth iPhone and who knows how many-th iOS version) they say stuff like "I don't have any problem sending emails" which is obviously not what I was asking them to check.

This has been an annoyance for a long time but just now it was a bit more than that because I followed up to something that had an email relay and I forgot that it would CC my email address so now the other party has my direct email address which is not ideal.

Is there a way to accomplish what I am tying to do in the mail app or do I need to get a third party app to do this basic function? Thanks