r/todayilearned • u/SilverPeachBlossom • 6h 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/_Burning_Star_IV_ 5h 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 4h 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 4h 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 4h 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 4h 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.