how do you stay connected when you literally never see each other awake?

Here's a slightly different angle worth sitting with: maybe the problem isn't the schedule, it's the expectation that connection has to look like normal-couple connection. You're trying to recreate dinner-table intimacy inside a setup that was never built for it, and then feeling like you're failing when it doesn't work. What if you stopped comparing yourselves to couples who see each other every evening and instead asked what connection actually looks like for two people on opposite clocks? That might mean a 10-minute overlap being sacred instead of rushed, texts that aren't just logistics, or accepting that some weeks you're more like teammates coordinating than romantic partners in the traditional sense, and that's not a downgrade. The missing-him feeling is real and valid, but it might also be grief for a version of togetherness that was never going to fit your actual life. Building a new definition might serve you better than mourning the old one.