The extent and quality of the relationship you end up with (with anybody, not just Hashem) depends upon what you put into it.
If I connect with my wife mainly as my personal candy machine, I get a relationship with a candy machine. Wow....profound...meaningful...satisfying...NOT.
Same l'havdil with Hashem. He can be my personal candy machine, sometimes I gotta pay for it, sometimes for free.... Still, all He is to me is my machine. He didn't make life to be that way! For us there is a real G-d there! He took us out of 'beis avodim' - slaves are like machines! But now, we are out of beis avodim because b'ni b'chori Yisrael! We are His kids now!
So: we read the 13 middos and see just Who this G-d is! Do we want more than a candy machine? Then we gotta become ovd'ey Hashem...whatever that means. Ask Yirmiyahu hanavi, who described it clearly and referred to His Rachamim.
And it takes time and work.
Same with the wife. Know her as a body.... get fun, frustration, pain, desire, more pain...more lust...mazel tov. But after it is over, it's all just memories, nothing more. Nothing tangible....is that 'real'? Anyone can play 'husband' and 'wife'. Anyone can go through the motions and even say "I love you".
But when you don't stop at that, and work to know and appreciate who she really is besides a body, (and besides even a woman!)... Now the connection can be real/tangible. And it grows, and grows. There can be joy, even when you are apart, cuz it's not an act and not just a memory.
That takes work and time. It all depends on what we want.