my new apple watch 8 ultra will not pair with my phone. it starts to pair and then when I hit update it gives me a message that it is connecting to my watch and then it goes back to the beginning and asks once again if I want to pair a watch.

I did all the hard restarts and turned icloud off then on again. That got me to be able to open and start the download for updating the watch app. Then it started all over again and asked me to update watch.

Is your phone running ios16 or newer?.

15.7-iphone says this is current and up to date

On the phone;

settings/general/software update and scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Do I want to update to iOS 16? I thought there were glitches being worked out still. Phone also says software is up to date... and is this the reason for this watch/phone sync issue?

Well you can't pair with a watch 8 until you update to ios16.