jquery mouseenter / mouseleave results in flickering featherlight lightbox

Tried a few different things (like changing the lightbox div to pointer-events:none) but nothing seems to help. Are there any ways to keep the lightbox open until the user moves off the trigger element?

$(document).ready(function(e) {
   $('#theboxa').mouseenter(function () {
        $.featherlight('#boxa', {});
    });

    $('#theboxa').mouseleave(function () {
      $.featherlight.close();
    });
});

I believe the flickering is caused by the pointer automatically moving to the lightbox (#boxa) but dont know how to prevent this.