I know when a situation is about to turn negative and avoid it

Rooms give notice before they turn. A pause half a second too long. Someone repeating a point they have already made, slightly louder. A joke that lands and then keeps going.

Most people register all of this and then override it, because leaving early is awkward and staying is only uncomfortable. So the signal gets noticed and filed and nothing is done with it, and afterwards comes the familiar feeling that you knew.

You did know. The gap is not in the perceiving. It is the small social cost of acting on what you perceived, which is nearly always cheaper than the evening it would have saved.