My husband is/was a bit like yours OP. Doesn't need all the validation from me, but works horrendous hours.
When our second baby was tiny he had a promotion at work, with more responsibility and for a while that was all he could think about. There was one evening, where I'd had the two children (age 2 months and 21 months) all day on my own - he'd left the house at 8pm and at 9pm he called to say he'd finished his corporate dinner, but was going on for drinks and would be back who-knows-when. My baby had not let me put her down for about five hours. I'd had to cook, eat, try to get my older one to sleep all with the baby hanging off me. I was empty. I asked him to come home and his response was "I need to spend time with these people; I have a relationship with them". I was so mad - what about his relationship with his family!?
Unfortunately, he never saw it from my perspective - just thought I was jealous of his big important job and his night out on the town.
He's always been a workaholic - pushes himself and shoulders more responsibility than he needs to - so that he now looks at least ten years older than he really is. People comment on it.
At weekends he refuses to work, but instead he falls asleep on the sofa cos he's so tired from pushing himself all week.
Periodically I will get to the end of my rope and tell him how abandoned I feel - how he uses up all the best of himself at work, leaving me with an exhausted shell of a man at the weekend. He'll hear it, do something like book a weekend away togetehr, arranging childcare etc, then go right back to the workaholic mode the next Monday.
One particularly bad episode was when he'd booked a weekend away for us, and I was so looking forward to it. We went into the hotel room, and I started to unpack, went into the bathroom to freshen up and came into the room fully prepared for rampant sex, which is what we would always do on checking into a hotel, only to find him on his laptop "clearing my emails before dinner, so I can relax". Honestly, something died at that point. I felt so unimportant. I'd looked forward to time away together, to focus on one another, but all he was focused on was work. And he couldn't see that his need to clear the emails before he could relax meant that he was prioritising work before me. Again.
BUT what has happened after 20 years of working at this mad pace is he's had a "midlife crisis", has quit his very important job, and is now thinking of taking on something less demanding.
His perspective has suddenly changed. Only the other night he said to a friend, "it's interesting hearing Covert's take on this - I wish she'd told me these things about my job and the way I worked before." I HAD told him - he just didn't listen when he was in the thick of it.
I am aware that I have gone on for far too long. The floodgates have opened! We are still married, still happy together, but this is a big part of our life and I have had to learn to deal with it. I tend to remind myself that he's bringing in the money, and he's a good honest man. I'd rather be married to someone who works hard than a lazy slob or a wet blanket with no ambition.
I just have to watch that I maintain balance in my life because my tendency is to try to match his work hours with endless activity, and I end up feeling guilty if I'm relaxing whilst he's working.
Definitely tell your husband how you feel, but you have to be prepared that this will be the pattern for your life together, if that's the way he is.