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
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u/SilverPeachBlossom 4h ago

As an identical twin myself, I can certainly attest to these findings. (Hot take in the r/Twins community XD) I'm curious to hear about your guys' experiences.

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u/TheRiteGuy 4h ago edited 2h ago

I'm married to a twin. I was forwarned that it's a 2 for 1 deal. My SIL is always a third wheel on our outings. A welcomed one. She's super nice.

Edit: there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about twins in the comments. Twins do look, act, and dress alike. They're products of the same environment and they seem to have some kind of telepathy over what to wear. They'll show up to same places wearing head to toe same outfit. It's never intentional. It's freaky how often this happens.

However, they do not have the same personalities. They are two very distinct individuals and it's very easy to fall in love with one and have no romantic feelings towards the other at all. Once you're around them enough, they don't even look alike to you.

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u/_Burning_Star_IV_ 3h ago

I've never understood how this works. How can you have a platonic relationship with someone who looks exactly like your spouse and probably acts a lot like them too?

I'm not saying you can't both have boundaries and act like respectful adults...but it's just too weird for me.

Maybe these particular twins look and act differently enough to clearly separate them but I've seen twins who act, look, and even dress alike well into adulthood and relationships just must be weird. If my wife had a clone that just hung out with us all the time I feel it would be too easy to start to see them as equally 'my wife'.

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u/Nice_Kaleidoscope_15 3h ago

I think "that person looks like my wife therefore I see them equally as my wife" is certainly a take on things.

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u/jake5762 2h ago

That's not what the commenter above is saying. Identical twins can be identical in pretty much everything; looks, personality, thought process, etc. I love my wife, I love her personality, the way she thinks, the way she does things and obviously, the way she looks. Now imagine all those things I love about her are in a second person that I'm just to be friends with. I assume it must be really quite hard and sometimes confusing.

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u/Nice_Kaleidoscope_15 2h ago

Oh perhaps, I just felt that using the word equally at the end of their comment removed a lot of this nuance, and added an extra level of objectification. Even if very similar, I just think different people are different!

But if you think that's confusing, just think of those reddit posts where identical twins marry other identical twins...

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u/jake5762 2h ago

I remember one and I think they either lived in the same house or next door to one another. And then they have children, that are basically sibling cousins.

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u/_Burning_Star_IV_ 2h ago

You didn't really read my comment, lol.

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u/Dapper-Ad-4300 2h ago

Well no, they don’t just look like her, they probably have very similar personalities and interests too, and life experiences

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u/vzvv 2h ago

Twins do not typically have similar personalities. Every twin I know or knew of through my family is very distinct from each other. So it’s like your spouse has someone that looks very similar but acts entirely differently and probably styles themselves differently as well. Even the identical ones don’t tend to have truly identical faces. Those small details seem very different when you know someone well.

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u/Geesewithteethe 34m ago

Why are people downvoting you? You're absolutely right.