Another identical twin checking in. My brother and I still look alike in our mid-forties, although I have weighed more than him since birth. (He beat me out by 7 minutes, but I had him in weight by a pound.) A few years ago in a restaurant we heard a boy at the next table say to his mother “Those two have the same face.”
Our parents went for alliteration when they named us, which is OK I guess but I probably wouldn’t do it. I remember being dressed alike until 5-6 years old, then we started getting things like shirts in the same pattern, but different colors. Neither really bothered me too much.
We grew up in a small town, so we could never do any kind of a switch. All our school classmates knew there were two of us and knew us both well enough that we couldn’t get away with much. As was mentioned by someone else, sharing birthday presents sucked. That went on for years. On the other hand, I always had someone to toss a football or baseball with, which was nice since we lived in the country and didn’t see any of our friends over the summer.
We haven’t had too many odd occurances between us. Mostly it has been things like buying identical items independant of one another.
When people ask what it is like to be a twin, I don’t know how to answer since that is the norm for me. My mother died when I was 8, so although I remember her I didn’t grow up with a mom around. People sometimes ask what that was like, and it is the same thing. Those questions are hard to answer since I never knew it any other way. To me that was normal life. I never thought I was any different from anyone else.
There seems to be a fairly frequent progression in life from wondering, as kids, how one’s brothers and sisters could be so different (“How could you think that?” “You must have been adopted”) to noticing in adulthood how many things one has in common.
But with twins one hears a different story, that they recognize as children how close they are.
So given the opportunity, when you were a child, would have liked to be more alike, or less alike your twin? Would the changed differences be about looks? Or about having different tastes? Or…?
Would the idea of having someone exactly like you (a clone) be appealing?
Again, for all practical purposes, identical twins are pretty much clones.
Given the opportunity, I really don’t know what I would reather have, a person more or less alike me. If things were changed, I’d think that I’d rather them to be about looks. Getting mixed up with someone else is a real pain. Having something to do with someone else, however, never gets old.
I have a twin brother; I’m the girl half.
Growing up we had different personalities & interests.
As for genetic illnesses among fraternal twins-- I have manic depression; he doesn’t, although I think he is depressive.
As just a sibling, no matter being fraternal twin, he has a 25% chance of developing manic depression. The odds become 75% if you are an identical twin.
I became suicidal a couple of years ago & I know that he was worried about me.
I am cognizant that if I killed myself that it would really mess him up.
Our father is not really in our lives, so our family structure is rather fragile.
I think it has been hard for him to see me become severely manic & depressive, because I am his twin sister.
We are empathetic for each other & supportive.
I agree with capybara that in my experience my twin brother is just like any other sibling, except we do have the uniqueness of growing up together experiencing a lot of things at the same time.
We fought a lot growing up, but I think it was affectionate fighting.
Now that we’re in our late twenties we talk more. We appreciate each other more now that we’re older.
I do know him better than my older brother, because we’re the same age.
Multiple births are becoming more and more common as more women are taking fertility drugs and having better prenatal care and nutrition, so there’s fewer stillborn children.