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 […]
Category Archives: Adult Twins
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 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. […]
Beware Twin Denial
On the last day of a New Zealand Multiple Birth Association conference, I chaired a panel of adult twins who volunteered their time to answer questions posed by moms of younger twins. Many of the questions presented to the panel addressed issues about twins being compared, their individuality, and the importance of knowing who is older. It was interesting that the twins who introduced themselves all remarked if they were the older one! The panel members seemed to agree that […]
Long Time No See
Often I post stories about twins celebrating milestone birthdays together. However, I rarely tell stories about adult twins who have reconnected in later life after some years of discord. An identical twin woman in her midseventies—whom I will call Mary—came to see me after a particularly traumatic interaction with her twin sister, Monica. These women live near one another—about a thirty-minute drive. They had a long history of getting together for family events but rarely saw one another by themselves. […]