A young-adult female twin posted these sentiments and gave me permission to share them on my blog. Twinship is a blessing. It’s a feeling of togetherness. It’s an unbreakable connection. Twins live in their own small twin world. They are the happiest pair when they live together. They never do anything wrong because they always have a teacher. They never fear going up against anything because they have twin support always. The problem starts when twins have to leave each […]
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Twin Transcendence
I know a number of twin pairs who found solace and companionship with each other in their later lives in spite of uncomfortable emotional struggles with one another throughout their marriages and parenting years. I reflected on this after interviewing a woman who described how she and her twin sister have grown closer as they approach their sixties. This woman remarked that she previously had a problematic relationship with her twin because her husband and sister did not get along. […]
Twin Loss: An Epigenetic Accident
A woman in her early twenties (I’ll call her Cathy) wrote me a beautiful email asking for advice about how to deal with the “loss” of her twin. She explained that she had read my book The Same but Different and found it helpful in many ways; however, her circumstances were such that my book could not offer her the specific help she needed. She hoped I would be able to provide additional resources for her after I learned more […]
It’s All My Twin Sisters’ Fault
Parents of twins who have older or younger singleton siblings often worry about how their other children cope with the twins’ attention-getting behaviors and public recognition. I recently spoke with a mom who has a middle school–age son and six-year-old twin daughters. She told me that she is frequently distressed when her son says mean things about his sisters and blames them for making him feel angry and frustrated. As the mother and I explored this matter further, I realized […]
Twin Therapy: Together or Apart?
Often when one twin contacts me to request help with a specific twin issue, she has an underlying assumption that I will or should suggest seeing them together. Even if she has had prior experiences in therapy with her twin where little is accomplished, she resists the notion of discussing the issues independently. When I listen to her rationale in favor of conjoint therapy, I wonder about the one twin’s capacity or willingness to confront the conflicts on her own. […]