Why did 85-year-old identical twin sisters decide to repudiate their twinship? The explanation is both complicated and simple. The simple version is that both women have not been able to accept their personality differences. Marlene said, “I was always embarrassed by Mabel’s loud and boisterous presence. I was so relieved to get married and move away so that I would no longer have to live with her.” Marlene and Mabel have accused each other of being abusive and unreasonable. What happened to their attachment?

Marlene’s daughter contacted me to find out if I might be able to help her mom and aunt Mabel figure out their conflicts. Neither was speaking to the other. Mabel had moved from the West Coast to the East Coast at Marlene’s request a few years ago, entertaining the notion of being able to help take care of each other. Initially they lived together; however, after relentless bickering and unbearable tension, they moved into separate apartments within the same retirement community.

Both women married in their early twenties. They explained that they had married at a young age to escape an insufferable home environment with an alcoholic mother. Mabel said that after Marlene left, she felt abandoned and bereft. The twins had dressed alike until they were 21 years old. Both are now divorced with adult children. It appears that Mabel endured considerable financial and emotional losses throughout her life.

In our session together, the initial presenting problem, according to Mabel, was Marlene’s intolerance regarding Mabel’s religious practices. Mabel said that Marlene was disrespectful of her beliefs, while Marlene related that she would not allow Mabel to display her religious relics in their shared household. Both blamed the other for behaving in inconsiderate and annoying ways—walking out in the middle of a conversation or repeating the same story over and over.

Marlene recounted an angry exchange where she told Mabel that she refused to ride in the car with her if she insisted on blasting her religious music on the radio. Marlene bluntly remarked that she does not want to look like her sister, be associated with her, or talk to her. She expressed that her willingness to be open and vulnerable with Mabel had run its course.

Getting to the real underlying issues took some doing. However, what eventually emerged was their shared inability to acknowledge and accept their personality differences and to find ways to manage their negative reactivity, impatience, and critical judgments. Mabel admitted to knowing exactly how to trigger her twin, which she does purposefully and deliberately when she becomes upset. She expressed a strong desire to repair their relationship, while Marlene remained hesitant and apprehensive about investing any more time or energy.

Neither has developed competent tools to handle conflict with her sister. Since the twins had to be inordinately connected to protect each other from their unstable mother, they did not have the developmental opportunity to learn age-appropriate conflict-resolution skills. Moving away from each other in young adulthood and reuniting as older adults, the sisters didn’t recognize their differences and had not developed the willingness to treat each other with respect, patience, and a sense of humor.

Their perpetual fighting ensures their separateness on the outside because they have not yet developed the intrapsychic tools to feel separate on the inside. Parents of twins need to be alert to the fact that closeness as well as separateness must be nurtured in twin relationships. Providing alone time with their parents and organizing some separate activities for the twins go a long way in helping differences be enjoyed and celebrated. Otherwise, the compelling competition and comparison might bury the burgeoning development of individuality and a sense of self.

Photo by Nickolas Nikolic on Unsplash