I can’t verify this because I’m currently running raspbian on my pi, but I would try making your pi boot to a text console, like you would for a headless server.
You can do so by opening a terminal and running the following command
sudo raspi-config
Then navigate to Boot Options > Desktop / CLI
Then choose Console Text Console, requiring a user to login
Then reboot your pi and see if you can now login via SSH with out physically logging into the pi first.
If this does not work you can reverse it all by physically logging into your pi
run the sudo raspi-config command
Then navigate to Boot Options > Desktop / CLI
Then choose one of the two Desktop options listed. Which ever suits you best. Then reboot.
Edit:
After running the sudo raspi-config command, it wouldn’t hurt to make sure SSH is enabled there also.