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.
Dating is essentially butt-sniffing. The longer you do it, the more familiar it all is. And it is a commitment - for many they’re committing to focus their interest on one person for a bit to see if they want to make it a longer commitment.
That said, I got a great piece of advice after getting out of a long relationship. A friend told me romantic relationships only end in one of two ways: you break up or someone dies. You only have control over one of those scenarios, so how can it be a Bad Thing all the time?