Popular culture strongly idealizes the closeness and instant understanding that twins often share.

Becoming an individual is one of the most difficult and critical problems twins face.

Twins have different and serious issues with competition that should be addressed with direct communication.

I think that twins will have different responses to the appropriateness of using their similarities to get ahead or get what they want. For example, my twin sister naturally borrowed from me, without oftentimes asking, whichever of my clothes were “needed to make a good outfit” for a special event. Non-twins may be horrified that twins are open to this “comfort of sharing.” And I say, “Why not?” Frankly, I have enjoyed using my similarities—visible, intellectual, and emotional—with my sister to get attention or to win an argument sensibly. And I had fun using my twinship as a tool to retaliate against all those unsolicited and perhaps inappropriate questions about my twin relationship: “Who is fatter, smarter, better looking, or more popular?” Onlookers must have thought that their questions were not too personal for the twins they were intruding upon, but often we were overwhelmed with questions that were nobody’s business but our own.

For example, a new family member once asked me (when I was 50 years old), “Which one are you?" She could have asked, to be more empathic, “Are you Barbara or Marjorie?” So I was shocked and humiliated by her poorly chosen words. It may have been just garden-variety thoughtlessness, but I perceived her words as rude. I hoped that ignoring her would shame her. I do have some regrets because I wanted to retaliate for easily confusing our identity, which was........

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