Hear me out:
The only, absolutely only reason why people don’t generally marry on the first date is to figure out whether they DON’T fit together.
So if you manage to figure out that the relationship is not going to work out before you get into real commitments (kids, mortgage, …) you successfully avoided trouble.
I see it so often that people think that dating is already a strong commitment and that ending a dead-end relationship is a failure.
There is no shame in realizing the relationship is going nowhere and ending it.
I strongly disagree with the point the people don’t marry on the first date as a compatibility test
People go out for just casual fun with no intent of ever marrying and sometimes with no intent of ever exceeding a casual relationship
So if the relationship is the “final product” it can still absolutely suck if it’s taken away
For the point of the argument it doesn’t really matter if the goal is marriage or some other type of long-term relationship.
And if you are going with a low-commitment casual relationship (which is totally fine, of course, no judgement here), then you do that because you don’t exactly expect the relationship to last to the grave. In which case not ending a non-functional relationship purely out of feelings of obligation, commitment or shame should be even less appropriate.
I mean, isn’t the point of low-commitment relationships to have low commitment? If the relationship sours, why feel shame for ending it?
Because you don’t want it to sour, you are comfortable. If I have a carton of milk in the fridge and it sours so I have to throw it out I am not happy that I avoided drinking sour milk but upset that I no longer have milk and now I need to go to the store to get more or live without
Tbh, I’d much prefer to throw out a carton of sour milk than to keep it in the fridge for years or even drinking it because I am afraid of feeling like a failure for throwing out the milk.