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.
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