Why We Should Be Having More Platonic Sleepovers

Words: Angelika May

Finding comfort in sharing a bed with someone has always been a human remedy. Who we choose to receive this affection from has historically depended on our romantic circles, but in an age increasingly defined by dating fatigue, emotional burnout and singledom, I wonder if we should begin subrogating the expectation that beds are solely romantic spaces. Perhaps we should use the literal bedrock of our friendships to alleviate day-to-day stresses and rid the pretence that sleepovers are a puerile activity, reframing them instead as an uncontroversial way to benefit our wellbeing. 

The most altruistic experiences of my life have usually centred around the bed. To be ensconced with another person is a pleasure that everyone should feel, and I’m not referring to sexual intimacy. Instead, I’m referring to the platonic sleepovers I have built into my weekly routine. What began as a “happy accident" - long dinner parties dragging into the early hours, missed trains, logistical convenience, or opting for safety after a night out - gradually became a ritual.

It seems that I am not the only one. Platonic sleepovers are having a major resurgence, arriving alongside a wider cultural shift towards prioritising friendship as a means of surviving modern dating culture. Across TikTok, users debate whether staying at a friend’s house in adulthood is “appropriate”, whilst #sleepover continues to gain over one million views. Hotels have even begun to introduce extortionate “sleepover packages”, commodifying a tradition favoured as a “low-key” or low-cost hang-out. 

Commodification aside, the popularity of adult sleepovers reflects something deeper about modern loneliness. We live in a digital age where falling asleep next to your phone feels more acceptable than falling asleep next to a friend. Romantic intimacy is prioritised, and idealised, whilst platonic intimacy in adulthood is less easily spoken about and can feel harder to define or place socially. 
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Perhaps this is why sleepovers carry such a powerful nostalgia. As children, sleepovers were treated as a normalised way to socialise and build intimacy. Girls are often encouraged towards an emotional openness from a young age, sustaining friendships through self-disclosure, affection, and mutual care. Sleepovers became the perfect environment for this development, and it is during this early shaping that gives sleepovers their nostalgic weight. 

“The nights are devoid of romance yet drunk with affection, spent in belly-laughter gossip, and a dizzy honesty that only seems to emerge once the lights are off — a kind of platonic pillow talk.”

The media we consumed reinforced this too. Films like Grease, and 13 Going on 30 framed late-night conversations, junk food, singing, and divulging secrets as rites of passage. There is something deeply comforting about revisiting those memories as adults, particularly when adulthood increasingly isolates us from one another. 

As a cis woman in and out of the dating pool, the decision to have regular sleepovers again felt like a natural carefree action. While this perspective is inevitably shaped by my own experiences of female friendship and intimacy, I don’t believe the emotional benefits of platonic closeness are exclusive to women and can extend across friendships of all genders and identities. 

Even while dating, I still prioritise sleepovers with my girlfriends — not as a placeholder for intimacy, but as a source of ease quintessential to the history of female bonding. Women have always thrived together,historically, strong female coalitions were necessary for childcare, mutual aid, food acquisition, and protection. Research surrounding human bonding consistently identifies social support as one of the most important predictors of wellbeing. Women, in particular, are more likely to adopt what psychologists call a “tend-and-befriend” response to stress, relying more heavily on friendships for emotional regulation and support. Whilst the context has changed, the instinct remains, and there are psychological benefits to giving platonic relationships the same mutual care and affection we unequivocally give to romantic partners. 

Maintaining strong social bonds is not simply emotionally fulfilling, but physically beneficial too. A meta-analysis by Holt-Lunstand et al., examining numerous epidemiological studies, found that individuals with fewer or lower-quality social connections had significantly higher mortality rates than those with strong social networks. Loneliness and social deprivation are repeatedly associated with poorer mental and physical health outcomes. Isolation can lead to a sedentary lifestyle and without support acting as a “buffer” for stress-induced situations, there can be many negative effects on behaviours, healthy lifestyles such as diet and exercise routines. In many cases it has been observed that there is a positive association between social support and cardiovascular health. 

Perhaps there needs to be a shift, not to wholly redefine the definition of “love” itself, but in the growing recognition of platonic relationships, for these to be viewed as wholly emotionally significant in their own right. When sleep data tells us that “sleeping next to someone you love provides a better night’s rest”, does it necessarily matter whether that person is a romantic partner?

There is something especially tender in the mundanity of it all, being welcomed into someone’s bedroom without ceremony, automatically knowing where the pyjamas are kept, brushing your teeth side by side, arguing over stolen covers, or deciding who sleeps nearest the wall. The nights are devoid of romance yet drunk with affection, spent in belly-laughter gossip, and a dizzy honesty that only seems to emerge once the lights are off — a kind of platonic pillow talk. 

I regularly share sleepovers with my friend Anya. We met around five years ago through an old job, and from that moment our lives began to fold into one another’s with an ease that has never really left. There has always been something serendipitous about our friendship and it turned into something greatly familial, a softness built on trust, honesty, and the unspoken knowledge that her door is always open — or rather now, her bedroom door. 

As adulthood crept in and our lives began to shift out of alignment with Anya stepping into her first full-time job, both of us became slightly more fragmented by time and obligation but our distance paradoxically made space for a different type of closeness. Around two years ago, sleepovers became something regular, almost inevitable. What began with a flicker of awkwardness dissolved quickly into instinct, until I can no longer remember a version of us that did not include this particular cub-like bond. 

There is a tenderness in our inconsistencies during our sleepovers. I talk too much when I should be sleeping, eager to flog dead horses, and Anya gently tells me to stop, only to start talking again herself moments later. Our nights spent together are continually moving through practiced intimacy and learning how to respond to one another's needs and boundaries in a compact environment, which deepens our ability to respond to one another beyond these sleepovers. 

Speaking to Anya about it, she said these sleepovers have unexpectedly taught her patience, a skill transferable to future relationships; I apparently snore when drunk or exhausted, something she has learnt to tolerate, and our small domestic negotiations over blankets and space has taught us compromise, communication and consistency in care. 

Ultimately, platonic sleepovers aren’t just nostalgic. I believe choosing friendship at the centre of our beds can feel radical and liberating, to opt for an intimacy that is not conditional, sexual, or exclusive in order to matter. Perhaps Samuel Johnson was right when he wrote, “In bed we laugh, in bed we cry, and born in bed, in bed we die”; the bed has always been a site of the human condition, so why would our friends be excluded from it?