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.
The relationship shouldn’t take much work at all. There are things tangential to the relationship that do take work, like finances and health issues, and all that other stuff, but if it takes a lot of work to just keep a relationship going then it probably needs to end.
That’s not true at all. I know a lot of married couples that feel like roommates and their marriages are easy. My wife and I make time to go on dates, plan vacations together, trade hobby time for bonding time. It’s not “easy” but if you’re implying this should all be second nature and not feel like work, then I think you’re a being a bit delusional.
Thoughtfulness and effort are not free of time and labor.
Not everything that takes effort is work.
If you want to do those things and it takes effort then it is just effort. If it is an obligation because the relationship will collapse if you don’t put in more effort than you want to put in, then it is work. People have different levels of effort they want to put into a relationship, and if there is a mismatch it will create work for one of them if they drag it out and that is going to put a ton of strain on the relationship.
A little work is fine as long as the overall relationship is good, but if most interactions are work then it is a terrible relationship.