You are completely free to do that. Most people get lonely - everyone doesn’t need a romantic partner per se, but a lot of people do and that’s fine as well. Everyone has to figure out what they want, and what they’re willing to do to make it happen.
As a stranger on the internet, I’ll just draw attention to “mostly tolerate” as something a therapist (which I am not) would probably want you to elaborate on. That does not sound like a healthy relationship, which explains why you take a dim view of them.
A lot of it was lightweight enough that archival sites etc might not have specifically ruled them out, aside from specific efforts to preserve Flash material. There are also modded versions of Flash Player and emulators that can still play SWFs, and FLV remains supported fairly commonly.