how do you actually get out of a first meet that is going badly

Saturday was a lesson.

Met someone. Within about fifteen minutes I knew it was not going anywhere, and within thirty I actively wanted to be at home. Nothing bad happened, he was not unpleasant, we just did not have a single thing to say to each other and he filled every silence by talking about work.

I stayed two hours.

Two hours, because I could not work out how to leave. Every time I thought about saying something my brain produced only options that would have been rude. I sat there constructing and rejecting sentences while nodding about procurement.

What is the line? I know people have one. I need something I can say that is not a lie, because I am terrible at lying and I will go red, and not so blunt that I feel awful walking home.

And separately, is there a version for when it is worse than boring? I got lucky that this was only dull.

This is the entire argument for the one hour coffee and I will keep making it until I die. You do not need an exit line if the format has an ending built into it. A cup finishes. Nobody has ever had to explain why they were not ordering a fourth coffee at four in the afternoon.

And the other half of the same trick is saying the end time at the start, cheerfully, while you are sitting down. I have something at seven. Now leaving at seven is a fact you established before you knew anything about the evening, so it cannot possibly be a judgement about the person opposite. Costs nothing, saves everything.

i just say i am going to head off. no reason attached. reasons invite negotiation

Reasons invite negotiation is the sentence I needed, because that is exactly what happened. I said I should probably go and then explained why, and he had an answer to the why, and then I was arguing about buses.

That is the mechanism, yes. An excuse is a problem, and some people will helpfully solve your problem. A decision is not a problem and there is nothing to solve. It is going to feel rude the first three times and then it will feel like nothing at all.