The reason it was hard is that you were making the decision in the worst possible place: cold, tired, invested, and with the consequences of turning back immediately in front of you and the consequences of continuing still abstract.
Experienced people mostly do not make that decision on the hill. They make it at home and then execute it.
Write the turnaround conditions down before you leave, specifically:
- A time. If I am not at the col by two, I turn around.
- A weather threshold. If the wind is above a stated figure at the exposed section, I take the low route.
- A condition. If visibility drops below a certain point, I do not attempt the ridge.
- A personal one. If anyone is genuinely cold or not eating, we go down.
The value is that you decide while warm, unhurried and unbiased. On the hill you are not deciding, you are reading what you already decided, and that is a completely different cognitive task.
Plan the escape routes at the same time. Look at the map for the points where you can drop off the route and where they lead. Knowing the bail options in advance turns turning back from a defeat into one of several planned choices.
So the answer to whether you were right: you probably were, and the real fix is that you should not have had to work it out there.