Remember that feeling when you were little and your parents told you that your best friend could sleep over?

Ahead of you was a night full of talking, giggling, and gossiping. You had as much time as you could want to hang out and have the fun that was usually restricted to passing time between classes or lunch in the cafeteria.

When I was getting ready to start college, I ended up with three random roommates. I was excited as I told my high school best friend their names and talked about how much fun it was going to be to live in the dorms.

“You know it’s not going to be like having a sleepover every night, right?” my pessimistic friend asked.

“You’re probably right,” I responded but secretly held out hope that it would be like a sleepover every night with no limit to the amount of talking and laughing we could do. Turns out, it was like a sleepover every night. Granted, I really lucked out in the roommate department, but the great thing about getting married is that you get to choose that person and more or less ensure that you get to have a life-long sleepover.

Why couldn’t marriage be like a sleepover every night?

I remember thinking about this a lot as my husband and I started dating.  As our relationship grew, and we stayed at one or the other’s house almost every night, that’s what it felt like. We got to stay up late talking and laughing. We got to get up in the morning, pick up where we left off, drink coffee, and have breakfast together. It was awesome, and it still is.

Many years later, we still stay up late talking, now about kids and work, and we get to wake up together, picking up where we left off. Sometimes we collapse into bed at night, too tired to talk, but we know that the other is just arm’s distance away if we want to.

I was going to list a bunch of keys to finding this kind of relationship, but really it just comes down to knowing how you want to feel in a relationship and not settling until you find it.

I’ve always thought that marriage was just getting to spend your life with your best friend, and after finding the right person, it turns out I was right. And it’s like getting to have a life-long sleepover.