I met Ducky* through Hinge in an effort to date more. I hadn’t gone on a date in over a year, and the idea of it was overwhelmingly daunting, but Ducky seemed like a safe choice for re-entry: He was a year older than me and his profile said that he was a therapist. I recognized him as the same guy who recently had slid into my Instagram DMs to ask me on a date as well. Persistent, I thought, admiring the eagerness of his interest. This also meant to me that he knew that I was trans, making any awkward conversations unnecessary. Feeling jaded by men who’d rather be chased than do the chasing, I responded to his Hinge ‘like,’ and then his DM, and we soon had plans to go on a date.

When planning for the date, he didn’t want to do anything outside of his Manhattan neighborhood, meaning I’d have a commute of just under an hour each way. I gave him the benefit of the doubt; I figured maybe the overworked mental health specialist wanted to show me where he enjoyed blowing off steam after work. We agreed to meet at a barcade-type jaunt he frequented in the area. This and nerves aside, I was hopeful.

When I got there, we played two rounds of pool before sitting at the bar to have a real conversation. He told me about the odd hours he worked, his commuter lifestyle, and what kind of training he was doing to get his mental health counselor license. This was when I realized Ducky wasn’t actually a therapist yet. I asked him what made him choose this path and he told me about his family and his desire to help people working through addiction. He was interesting and his work was noble. He felt psychologically superior to the other men I’d dated—the vapid male models and influencer types—and he was a solid young man forging his path in the world.

He had just come back from the bathroom when the conversation hit a lull and he took this as an opportunity to lean in for a kiss. Right there at the bar, just the ambient noise of the gamers around us, he laid one on me—fast and wet. I must have turned bright red, not the ideal reaction to a first kiss, because he looked puzzled when he finally pulled away. “Sorry, I just haven’t been kissed in a while,” I told him. “It totally took me by surprise.” He smiled and leaned back in, and we proceeded to have a full-on makeout session right there against the bar. It felt good to let loose, enjoy the moment, and mostly, to be kissed.

When we finally pulled our faces apart, I decided it was the perfect time to end the date. Ducky walked me to my train and kissed me a final time, saying goodnight, and we texted all the way home. I sent him the pop song I was listening to on the train, and he sent me something punk and indie. Interesting, I thought, maybe this is what people mean by opposites attract? I texted my friends and reflected on the date, smiling at my phone. At home, I gushed to my roommate. I wasn’t giddy, but I was eager to explore this connection further.

As I got in bed, I got a text from Ducky, but it wasn’t the sweet goodnight text I was hoping for—it was a raunchy sext: “I wanna tease you until you get super excited and flustered and you let me pin you down and use you till it drips out.” I almost threw my phone. Red flags of a trans fetish immediately started circling my thoughts. I didn’t know how to respond, so I sent back a quick, “Woaaaaah hahahaha” along with some coy emojis. I added: “Sexting is confusing lol” and “I’m going to bed but enjoy your imagination.” I was hoping he’d pick up on the fact that I wasn’t quite feeling it.

Ignoring the fact that I curved his sexts, and entirely compartmentalizing the sexts myself, we made plans the next day for our second date. He once again did not want to leave Manhattan, but I insisted on a Tuesday evening walk in a Brooklyn park I loved. After that, I didn’t hear from him for a few days. Then, the night before our second date, he texted me at 8 p.m. saying: “Hey I need to postpone for tomorrow because I have strep throat. I’m sorry for cancelling. We can do something late at night tomorrow like watch a movie if I’m feeling better.”

Oh great, he’s too sick to come to Brooklyn but he’s down for a late night hookup, where I’d contract his strep throat? I thought. How could this man who’s studying to be a mental health professional be so ignorant of social decency? While I hadn’t had a sexual or romantic fantasy about Ducky, I definitely assumed, given his professional training, that he was capable of making me feel something other than disappointed, which was swirling through me. I don’t want to be anyone’s late night plan, or keep trying to see where things went with someone who can’t meet me where I’m at, metaphorically and physically.

Just under two weeks after his strep throat diagnosis, I knew I had to end things. We messaged so much I couldn’t just ghost him, unfortunately; I felt I owed him the courtesy of letting him down kindly, so I shot him a gracious text. Within a half hour, he replied saying he “agreed” because we were “way too different.”

He wasn’t wrong—we were so different. I didn’t want to ravage him the way he so crudely wanted me, I wasn’t into the songs he shared, and he didn’t run in the same social or cultural spheres. Not to mention the fact that he made me feel so uncomfortable in the way he sexualized me. The PDA had been a foreshadowing of the sexts, and the explicit sexts weren’t appealing to me in any way. I hadn’t felt the urge to go any further than our makeout that night, let alone sext a few hours later. I hadn’t clearly stated any boundary with Ducky, but his abrupt kiss and out-of-nowhere sext, in hindsight, felt non-consensual and sexualizing. I knew that the person I wanted to be with—and am meant to be with—wouldn’t make me feel icky like that.

After my “breakup” message, I stopped hearing from Ducky for a while. A couple weeks later though, he reached out, letting me know I looked great in a recently-posted Instagram picture. Instead of ignoring his compliment, I thanked him, maybe leaving the door open in his eyes, because he took this as an opportunity to ask if we could ever make out again. I stopped replying because clearly he still did not understand boundaries or standard social protocols, let alone romantic ones. To this day, I still hear from Ducky. Most recently in January, when he slid into my DMs again to say, “let’s go out again!!”

I assumed that by meeting a therapist (even an aspiring one), I’d be meeting a man who was emotionally mature, with strong communication skills, who understood the concept of mutual desire and consent. But, just because someone is a therapist, or one in training, doesn't mean they're going to treat you with the dignity you deserve or even have the tools needed to really see and respect you. Since my Ducky debacle, I’ve been making more of an effort to meet men in real life and do less matching on apps. I’m off to quite the slow start, but at least I get a sense of the whole package and not just what’s been curated for my swiping pleasure.

*Name has been changed.