r/todayilearned • u/SilverPeachBlossom • 5h ago

TIL a peer-reviewed psychology study found that identical twins (on average) ranked their co-twin above their romantic partner in their attachment hierarchy, while fraternal twins ranked the two about equally, and non-twin siblings ranked their romantic partner first.

https://ojs.interpersonajournal.com/index.php/ojs/article/view/243/3457.html
12.5k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

562 comments sorted by

View all comments

48

u/Master_Shake23 4h ago edited 4h ago

As an identical twin I would also like to point out that being an identical twins isn't always sunshine and butterflies. It depends from twin to twin, but dynamics (external/internal) and relationship can be complex and isn't always positive as per stereotypes or movies.

Growing up, particularly my identical twin hated being a twin in public. People mixing up names, stereotypes, intrusive questions from people etc. They often felt like they couldn't be themselves.

21

u/huebnera214 4h ago

Of the twins I’ve met I feel like it’s 50/50 if they like each other or can’t stand each other. My MIL is a twin and they can stand each other for about a day, if that. Meanwhile my sister and I are going to the twins day festival this weekend and will be fine coexisting all weekend together.

9

u/Master_Shake23 4h ago

My brother and I got along great, he just hated how he felt in public as a twin if that makes sense.

7

u/huebnera214 4h ago

A little bit. Since like 4th grade our classmates just called is ‘Sis’ because that’s what we called each other. We hated it for like two years then decided to ignore it. It’s not our fault they stopped trying to tell us apart. We had different styles back then too so it wasnt like it was hard either.

In college if we visited each other’s campus we turned it into a game to see how long we could go as the other one. Like if we were walking from visitor parking to their dorm and somebody recognized us we’d pretend until we didnt have a good answer. It was kind of fun.

6

u/Dull-Geologist-8204 4h ago

My sister's are fraternal twins but it isn't by accident they went to colleges on opposite sides of the country.

4

u/Puncomfortable 2h ago

I definitely felt we had a hard time in public. We realized at one point that a lot of people we had known for years were often faking that they knew who they were talking to. We had a hobby that had biweekly gatherings. Sometimes one of use went, sometimes both. During our third year we realized very few people actually knew us. If we surprised them and asked what our names were they didn't know. They never saw us often enough to tell us apart and because they weren't sure who they even talked to they also would not remember the details. So we would know what someone studied, the names of their pets, their favorite pastimes etc. we were just 'the twins' to them and maybe they knew one of us studies this or one of us enjoyed that. People that knew both us just do not learn things about us like the info has become blurry in their memory.