At the time of writing, I've been in a relationship for 18 years. We met when I was 11 years sober.
It's an alliance not a candy store, a rollercoaster, a feather-bed, an IV drip, or a mirror (these characterising some unhealthy entanglements I had when I was young). I don't need the relationship to be OK. Because I'm OK, I don't demand anything of the relationship, and the relationship is therefore able to do what it is supposed to do: provide a source of additional stability, strength, and resource for us each to perform the functions that we, individually, are called upon to perform in the world.
It's also fun to live together, hang out, and simply be, and the proximity is delightful, as is the proximity to nature. Nature does not give you anything or do anything for you. It merely is, and its is-ness suffices. It's also a non-material bond, so the sense of connection is quite as profound whether or not we are physically together. There is no longing associated with absence, because, with non-material bonds, absence does not exist as a notion: all is ever-present, outside time and space. Although physical presence is fun, it is not the sine qua non. It is not the body that connects but the part of the mind that transcends the body.
The relationship not there to titillate, thrill, entertain, prop up, compensate, or medicate: it's the boat to take us down the river and provides welcome company for the journey.
I was very careful about who I got into a relationship with: someone independent, emotionally intact, boundaried, and contributing constructively in the world. To find such a person, I had to become that person myself. Then the match showed up, having been waiting, as it were, in the wings.
Such alliances are immensely powerful, intangibly, invisibly, and ineffably so.