If the Bucket isn't a good partner for Stanley, it follows that isn't isn't a good partner for the Narrator, right?
I mean, we know the Narrator eventually leaves the Parable (or would've left if we hadn't stopped in the Epilogue) because he realizes his attachment to Stanley isn't really healthy.
Personally I am of the belief that Stanley is The Narrator's reassurance bucket. He created him for companionship, to have someone to talk a that wouldn't talk back. He starts neglecting the people in his life just to work on/spend time with Stanley. Probably gets a divorce about it. Stanley might've started as an empty vessel, much like a bucket, and even though the Narrator knows this he finds himself attached to him (maybe even In Love With Him, if you take Stanley's love of the bucket as romantic, which you don't *have to* but the game seems to support in some way).
However, Stanley isn't real. And the bucket, well, it is just a bucket. It can't correspond his feelings, not really. Stanley's love for it comes from a place of devastating loneliness, it isn't really healthy.
I think the game in the end is trying to teach us to let go. Things change. They come to an end. You can't stay stuck forever, you can't let your fantasies/your creative work/your nostalgia run your life.
It is such a shame that just as the Narrator finds the strength to let go, we drag him down again, because our own desire to keep the Parable going forever and the Settings Person's power is stronger.
There is a shipper in my heart who believes that Stanley and The Narrator are meant to be together forever in a fucked up antagonistic co-dependent endless narrative cycle, but if we take canon seriously, it would probably be for the best they split apart. Stanley wants his freedom. The Narrator wants his freedom. They can't be free as long as they're trapped with each other in the Parable, as long as the player will keep them trapped in the cycle.
(If we want them to be happy we need to turn off the game. Reject Settings' offer. Touch grass and let go.)
(Of course I'm not doing that though. I'm slurping up that fanfiction like it's the world's tastiest ramen. Men kissing? Brother sign me up. Let's keep this train going until the heat death of the universe.)
Anyway, yeah. That's my personal reading.