We feel like roommates. How do people actually reconnect?

Something quiet that helps: stop only talking about the household and start being a little curious about him again — not "did you call the plumber" but "what's actually on your mind lately." You knew how to be interested in each other once. The logistics crowded it out; they didn't erase it. A few genuine questions can reopen a door you forgot was closed.

Roommate phase is incredibly common and very reversible — don't panic. It usually isn't fixed by one big talk, it's fixed by small repeated contact. A real 20 minutes at night with phones down. A standing thing that's just yours. It feels forced for about two weeks and then it doesn't. The closeness comes back through reps, not a breakthrough conversation.

The fact that you miss him is actually the good news here — it means the wanting is still alive, it's just buried under nine years of logistics. That's not nothing. You don't need a big conversation. Big conversations, when you're this out of practice, tend to feel like performance and scare people off. Start smaller than feels meaningful — sit near him while he does something, ask one real question a day that isn't about the calendar, text him something you'd have texted a friend. The goal isn't intimacy right away, it's just... proximity again. Letting yourselves be in the same room without a task attached. Here's the question underneath yours, though: do you actually like who you're becoming in this tired, parallel version of your life? Sometimes reconnecting with him starts with reconnecting with the parts of yourself the exhaustion has quieted. He might meet you there.