Did Mary really need St Joseph?

Today's lovely feast has the title of the "Solemnity of Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary." Coming in the week before the Annunciation, it primes us to think of the Incarnation. While Joseph didn't have a role in the Incarnation itself, he had an essential role in the life of the Incarnate Word. And I recently read a lovely passage on what it meant to Mary to have a companion of the stature of that "just man" of the House of David:

Although different from Adam’s loneliness, as he experienced an existential difference when surrounded by the animals, Mary could have felt a loneliness based on the difference in grace when surrounded by others who suffered a lack of grace the reason of original sin and their own actual sins. Just as Adam longed for a human companion, Mary would have longed for a grace-filled companion who would love God with an intensity close to her own and who would love her in a way that would respect her vocation to virginity.
With such a unique and difficult vocation, Mary and Joseph must have both rejoiced to have found a spouse willing to receive and except the other as a gift in a virginal marriage.… The gift that Mary received was Joseph, “a just man” whose faith matched her to form a virtual community of love in their marriage, reflecting the spiritual self-donation of persons in the Trinity...

Gloria Falcão Dodd, STD (The Virgin Mary and Theology of the Body)