Deco is not absolute science, there is not straight boundery of getting bent or not.
I always tell students, I can learn you how to do save decompression dives, with the knowledge of today, but I cannot avoid you of ever getting bent.
And this is the truth. Why are there still people getting bent on just recreational dives within the NDL? It goes right for all divers on a day, except 1. The why is most times a why and the cause is never found. Even if you have a pfo, it is not said that it is the cause of your dcs, it is only a probability. Why did it goes well on other dives? There is also a form of the day. Some factors can increase the risk of dcs, even if they do more deco. But also fit, young people get it sometimes.
The fact is that the lungfilter is the important way to loose bubbles. And doing shallow stops is bubble growth management. As long as the bubbles are small enough to leave your buddy over the lungfilter, there is no problem. If they grow too big, they got stucked somewhere you don't want it. This is the most easiest way to explain deco, but again, it is more complex, we don't talk here about bubbles that stay in the body and don't go over the lungfilter by shunts.
But, it is not the complete explaination. Some people have more bubbles at the surface than others, even after doing longer deco. Also not all of that bubbles indicate the risk of getting bent. This is why the O'dive is a nice tool, but cannot predict everything. You also must know your 'normal' and that is very difficult to know, as people are human and no robots. So you must do the same dive over and over again in the same circumstances to really know all factors. By just doing 100 dives everywhere, you maybe can find a line, but don't know all factors. Even the food and drink in the day(s) before can give other results. The amount of bubbles found after a dive is a just a gauss curve, on the left the ones with just a few bubbles, in the middle the average people with some bubbles, on the right the ones that have a lot of bubbles. Which one are you?
There is a French cavediver that is doing cavedives over 200m, even to 300m on a regularly base. If I will do such dives, I will probably get bent, he doesn't. Why?
We don't do saturation diving, so if we dive, some tissues maybe get fully saturated, others not. Theoretically, if you do stops, your tissues stay loaded till the ambient pressure. They are saturated. If you go over the ambient pressure line, some tissues get oversaturated. The M-value is the theoretiscally value you can get up safe. This is just a theoretically line, created by Workman/Buhlmann.
To stay between the ambient pressure line and the M-value line, you are offgassing safe (this is the line GF-low/GF-high known in buhlmann algoritms). But again, not further than the new ambient pressure (I don't talk now about taking oxygen, as then you can theoretically get zero nitrogen you your tissues if you stay long enough). So there comes a moment again that even if your Ptissue =Pambient, you still can get bubbles if you go further up.
The only thing is that if you stay longer at a decostop in the shallows, the tissues loose more saturation and go more away from the M-value and go more to the ambient pressure value. So theoretically it adds safety.
See it as the no fly time. If it is 12 hours, your safetystop at surface will be 12 hours. Probably it also goes well if you fly after 10 hours or 8 or even after 4. But the 12 hours is what is ok for almost all divers doing a single dive. But if you make it 1 week, it goes well for all divers. But this is not doable for most people.
Some more information about the m-values Workman/Buhlmann:
https://www.shearwater.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/understanding_m-values.pdf
And yes, deco can suck, it can be very boring. But remember if you are laying on the ground in a narrow tunnel in a cave looking at the daylight where you can't go yet that the places you came from are worth the waiting now.
Same on an boring anchorline, the wreck you visited was very nice, just wait that 2-4 hours to get safe up and can do it again a next time.
But if you can do deco on a reef, yes, that is the best way to do deco. And it is also not boring to add some more deco by just doing a normal dive at the end of the dive.