While they may look alike and are definitely related, these twins are revealing what made them completely cut off contact with their opposite twin.
*Content has been edited for clarity
Different Paths Of Life…
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“We went down two separate life paths.
As children, we were the typical twins: same haircut, dressed similarly, same bedroom, etc.
When we became teenagers, we realized we were two separate people and didn’t want to be similar in any way. So I kept down the regular path, focused on school, and got a part-time job. She started to rebel and began skipping school, running away from home, and just hanging out with the wrong crowd.
Now I’m a junior at a private college and she’s on welfare with her 3 children and dead-beat baby daddy.
We don’t talk because it always ends up in an argument about me getting ‘lucky’ and being ‘favored.’ I’d love to see her and reconnect but we’re just two different people now.”
He Loves Being An Uncle More!
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“I wouldn’t say we don’t speak at all, as I love my nieces and nephew and want to see them every now and then. But I try very hard to communicate as little as possible with her. The short story is that we have never gotten along.
The long story is that she has tried to literally ( and I don’t use this term lightly) kill me. Multiple times. We are fraternal twins (I’m a guy, she’s a girl) and growing up she was usually given the benefit of the doubt. Which meant she could get away with much more. She was almost always bigger than me as I have usually been fairly skinny and she liked to eat. So she bullied me. All the time. Whenever my parents were gone, she’d hit me, tell on me, and make me cry, when we were little. She once threw a decorative Mickie Mouse phone at me that messed up my nose.
Anyways, she got into substance abuse young, around the time we were teenagers. She was already unstable and this sent her over the edge. She would constantly threaten to hurt me, cut me, or what have you. I don’t even remember the first time she actually stabbed me, I just remember it was with scissors. At that point in our life I was not so skinny anymore, so I was able to defend myself somewhat and I don’t think the scissors went deep.
After that incident, my parents finally realized how crazy she was and tried to get her help. Eventually, she ran away for a while and would run away a few more times, each time coming back when she lost all her money.
Now though, she has 2 kids, lost a lot of weight and is mostly off of illegal substances, I hope. She’s still an absolute brat, but I can tolerate that if it allows me to see her kids.”
“I Don’t Even See Him As My Brother Anymore”
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“My non-identical twin and I are, more or less, polar opposites; we’ve always been — when he was into gaming, I was into performing; when I was into the Internet, he was into breakdancing. Plus for the majority of my life I’ve been a loner/introvert, he has always been pretty extroverted and popular.
When 18 came along, I moved out and went to study in London. He stayed with my parents and began to pursue bodybuilding, something that soon became a huge issue: he had no job and was eating 7 full meals a day + taking steroids and expected my single working mother and retired father to pay for that lifestyle.
When I was studying, I’d ended up drifting away from the family; one year I didn’t even bother coming down for Christmas, that really broke my mother’s heart. I don’t think I ever spoke to my brother throughout the four years I was there.
Anyway, time at university ended and, with a huge student debt and no money, I had no other real choice but to move back in with mum, dad, and my twin. I’d say it was here where our divide became less about differences and more about resentment of one another (more me resenting him, to be honest).
Moving back in with your parents sucks, especially if you studied far away. I was depressed for a while, working a menial job and coming home to a freeloading jock who was so pent up with ‘roid-rage’ that spending time in a room with him was almost unbearable. I honestly saw him as a complete failure, and as I was in the same situation as he was, I transposed that identity to myself as well.
In short, being around him made me feel like a failure. I hated it and that made me hate him. Alongside the fact we’re opposites, it was all too much.
From the moment I moved out to a crappy flatshare, I’ve never seen him. He didn’t even come to my mum’s funeral. Actually, I don’t really speak to most of my family anymore…just moved on, I guess. That life seems like a previous lifetime rather than my past. I don’t even see him as my brother anymore.
I doubt we’ll ever speak again unless we bump into each other at a funeral or something. I don’t know what he’s doing with his life, I don’t know where he lives, I don’t even know his phone number. Since the age of 24, he’s been out my life forever.”
His Long-Lost Twin
“The doctor told my mother my twin brother was stillborn but she heard him cry – this was in 1960 in southern Missouri. I think they did twilight sleep then for deliveries but mom said they knocked her completely out and when she came to, insisted she’d heard him cry. The doctor told her no she was wrong and told her there was no grave, no death or birth certificate and to just forget about it.
She raised mad chaos and he told her he’d hate to have to commit her. My mother had been a Marine Corps officer during WWII, held security clearances because she worked at HQ in the Signals Section, and then worked for the UN in China after the war. She was stable, smart, and not used to be told what to do.
When I got out of the service I tracked down a fetal death certificate for him, which they’d told her didn’t exist. I also found a grave site, which they told her also didn’t exist.
I’m at a dead end. The only way I think I’m going to prove anything now is to find an attorney who will file the petition to open the grave site and find a reputable forensics lab to take samples down through the grave shaft to see if we can get any remnant DNA. The state of the forensic art is such that we can now get remnant DNA from 400 and 2000-year-old corpses, so I’m hoping that sampling the grave shaft will tell us either there was a baby in the grave, or there was not, and if there was, if it was related to me.
Now, here’s the creepy part: In the last few years, there have been many cases of twins where one of which was given to the mother and the other of which was sold to another parent and the birth mother was told that her other twin had died. Cases in Missouri, Georgia, Montana – all over the US.”
Life As The ‘Nice’ One
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“My fraternal twin is pretty much a polar opposite of me.
I was always told I was the nice twin back in high school. At one point he joined the Army and I feel like somewhere within that time, his mental state declined. He somehow got honorably discharged even though I know all he really wanted was to sleaze himself out. I feel like he got involved with bad people, started doing illegal substances, and has a pessimistic outlook on life. He is horrible at keeping in contact. He would text me in the past and when I would respond, he would ghost me until the next time he texted at a much later date. He has threatened my girlfriend and me with murder and has said that he has ‘tortured’ or ‘killed’ people. I mostly believe that he’s lying, due to insecurity. He has anti-society thoughts and feels like the world is against him.
A couple times previously, I have tried helping him by promoting college and to get him on a good path. At one point, I lost my patience and got very real with him over a text convo where I was met with 1-2 hours of non-stop texts which were harassing and threatening. Shortly after he texts me to say hi as if his text rampage never happened. I never responded and have cut all contact with him ever since. He aspires to be a farmer for pot and claims he has a ton of money despite living with a roommate in a place that is far from lavish. I just want him to have decent goals and to aspire to something greater. It’s his choice. I love him and can only wish for the best.
But at this point in time, I have zero interest in having a relationship with him.”
There’s No Use In Trying Anymore…
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“My twin and I don’t talk anymore.
My mom had some sort of mental break and decided I was evil and needed to be gone. She wrote a whole public manifesto about her hatred of me and how she was ‘disgusted and appalled’ she had a hand in my creation, how she had plotted to remove me from the family and gloating at her success. My family, including twin, responded basically with: ‘We don’t know what’s up with her, none of this makes sense, but we’re just gonna ride this out and wait until she fixates on something new, sorry!’
By the time she did I was so disgusted and appalled myself at the entire thing, I simply had no interest in resuming contact. So I didn’t.”
Not Interested In Communicating?
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“I have a twin. We no longer talk.
About 10 years ago, I went to clear out my (our) dad’s house after his death (suicide), even though we never knew him. County identified us as next of kin, so, obviously, it was up to us to deal with the follow up after his death.
My twin didn’t care to fly out to Cali, but I did.
As I said, we never knew him. He left my mom when I was still in Pampers.
When I arrived at his house, it became very real that his personality was split…some of his personality I picked up, and the other half was my brother. I’m into electronics, CAD, etc, and my dad even had some of the very same books on his bookshelf that I did. My dad also had robots and toys and stuff, which my twin is into (but not me).
Another trait that my dad has was that he never wanted to communicate with anyone outside his immediate circle (aka, only his wife). Sadly, my brother took on this trait. So, what that means is that he’s so freaking introverted that he never wants to talk to anyone in our family…not even his own twin. I gave up on him this past X-mas because we drove up to his town and got a hotel, went to a tasting at a vineyard, and ‘invited’ him to tag along. He made some lame excuse. Didn’t even bother to mention getting together for dinner.
It’s like, ‘Hey bro, I just drove 4 hours and I just so happen to be near you. I’m not requiring you to meet me, but it would be cool if you did, because I haven’t seen you in 5 years, and your only 5 minutes away from the part of town I’m in.’
So yeah, I don’t talk to my twin anymore.”
His Family Picked A Favorite…
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“My twin and I haven’t spoken more than 5 times since 2010. We’ve never gotten along great, even if I’d say we had a relationship that mattered to me.
When my mom had my little (half) brother is when it got really strained because my twin, me and my little sister (4 years younger) were forced to do most of the parenting. I disagreed with this then and I still do. It’s not your kids job to parent.
Anyway, we started to conflict a lot more in our senior year, 09-10. I got stuck with the kid more often because my twin was in the school band and had to practice. I was in theater and was active in a fairly large amount of UIL academic competitions back then. I got passed over fairly often by the family for events because nobody thought I had any future doing anything. My brother was funny so he was better liked by the family and I was angry and depressed all the time. I made the mistake of asking him to talk to our own mother, with me, about getting me into the clinic to see a doc about some antidepressants and when we started talking, he helped my mom mock me about it.
When we left for college, I went across the state to a big school in the big city my grandparents lived in and he stayed home, living with my mom and stepdad. Even though I was the one going to the harder school and was accepted into a difficult math/comp sci program, he was the one accepted by the family as smarter because they thought he was going somewhere. He got really hard to talk to around now and I only really saw him when I came home for holidays, which he usually made so frustrating that I left early, sometimes several days. I knew he was cheating on his girlfriend, my ex’s best friend, and when I tried to talk to him about it, it turned into ‘let’s get the whole family going on why you’re still single.’
He got married to a girl I can’t stand. She wants to be a cop but has never had the guts to take the dive and go to an academy and has never worked a patrol in her life, but because her degree is in criminal justice she thinks she’s the bomb.com. I, on the other hand, have been in law enforcement for 6 years and actually know what I am doing, with a Bachelor of Science, in Criminal Justice, and looking to apply to grad school soon. But because she’s my brother’s wife, my whole family is obsessed with her view on things, or her experiences (of which there are very few). She is viewed as an educated, well-versed person while I am a pig and a racist (totally not, just saying).
I spent 20 years trying to be a part of the family, and he was the worst part of it. Even though I think my mom and stepdad are terrible people for the way they treated my sister and me, everything was worse if he was involved. I’m only now beginning to accept how screwed up my relationship with him has left me. I want to find a therapist to talk to about the ways that I am so screwed up from him and mom.”
Ruining The Family Business?
“My identical twin brother, the attorney, ran a family restaurant into the ground. Borrowed startup money from my mom and dad and me. Didn’t pay back. Litigated the family for 2 years to stay in control until the end. Decimated my elderly parents financially – $750,000. I lost upwards of $600,000. Spread litigation to several other family businesses. Dropped the sham lawsuits at the very end and closed the restaurant. Damage was done. Family fractured forever.
Shockingly, he didn’t lose any money. He never had skin in the game. Used litigation successfully to damage everyone else but himself to force a one-sided settlement – At the cost of all of the relationships.
At the end, I leveraged everything I had. I bought all remaining businesses and real estate to financially stabilize and protect my elderly parents.”
Sociopath As A Brother?
“I was always there for my brother since I was a small one, especially when our mother left our dad.
He wasn’t the nicest to me. In fact, he used to bully me quite a lot, psychologically and physically. He would even get his friends on taunting me throughout my childhood. But he was my twin and I loved him, I saw the pain he lived with. We think he might have some mental thing going on, he always struggled with academics and socializing.
We weren’t close all the time, but he is a bit of a sociopath. I was one of the only one people he cared about and felt compassion for, others he didn’t care. I felt the need to be there for him, and at times it was only me who could be there for him.
I love him like no other person, I have three tattoos dedicated to him actually.
The day he ran away from home, and the day he got arrested, were the worst days of my life. I’ve never cried so hard to what felt like a loss. When Scarlet Witch lost Quicksilver in Age of Ultron? I cried for the rest of the day when I saw that movie because I know that’s actually what I looked when I ‘lost’ my brother both times.
I haven’t visited him in jail since he’s been there since December 2012, I couldn’t bear the thought. It would tear me apart to have left him there each time. Perhaps I should have found the strength to do it, but there have been so many times I lent him strength, I just couldn’t find it this one time.
My phone was turned off in September, and he wrote me an angry letter telling me to screw off. He hasn’t called since.
I wrote a letter, I should send it this week, he does get out in 3 months.”
Their Trip To Iceland…
“My twin sister and I had an on/off relationship as teenagers. It was mainly because she had some anger issues and was generally a rude person.
We had the same friends who she lost years ago while I am still friends with them today. My dad committed suicide when we were 17, and that immediately ended the current year-long fight we were having. I was hoping it would get better after that but it only lasted about 6 months before she stopped talking to me for whatever reason. So there’s a bit of background.
A couple of years ago (I’m 25 now) she contacted me at Christmas and said she was visiting our home city in Australia and wanted to catch up. I obliged because I hate that we don’t get along, and we had lunch, went out drinking together, spent Christmas day together and it was great. We both had travel plans the next year and said we would meet in Europe somewhere.
Fast forward to our Iceland trip. We rented a 4WD, costing about $800 for 10 days, I fronted the cost and the idea was she would pay for petrol, food etc until we were even.
First few days of the trip were great, we were getting along and having a fun time driving around Iceland. We had found 2 travelers in Iceland who wanted to do the same thing as us, so we took them along. A few days in she starts getting snappy with me, rude and self-centered as well, even towards the two other girls we were with. I tiptoed around her for the next few days, not wanting to cause a fight.
Then I said something that ticked her off, I can’t even remember what it was now, it was nothing. She snapped and yelled at me that ‘I’ll never forgive you for Dad.’ What she was referring to exactly I’m not sure, I had a rocky relationship with my parents when I was young but by the time he passed away we had put it behind us. In my opinion, you never ever drag someone’s death into an argument, grief is horrible and you don’t know how the other person is coping. So that was the moment for me – I knew I was done with the cycle of friends and enemies with her, she had crossed the line.
So I went back to Reykjavik, ending the road trip early, and spent the rest of my time there in a hostel having a great time. She still owed me about $200 which she never paid me – blocking me on messenger when I asked for it. But I don’t care about the money, that wasn’t a surprise to me. Bringing my dead father into a fight that had absolutely nothing to do with him is taking it past the point of no return.”
Her Father Was Disowned?
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“My dad didn’t speak to his twin sister for a long time because of my grandmother basically disowning him. My grandmother really disliked my mum and resented her, so there was a huge rift between them and he ended up not speaking to his twin because of how fractious things would become. His twin was really loyal to their mother, and it would mean arguing with her constantly and her badgering him to speak to their mum and make things up. She didn’t appreciate or see that their mum was making him miserable.
He kept in touch occasionally for ten years, but it would always end up with her becoming angry at him for not making up things with my grandmother. I’m not sure what changed, but recently, dad went round to see nan and they kind of put things aside and have been speaking in a sort of minimal way. He’s in contact with his twin again and things have been pretty pleasant.
When I turned 17, I started seeing his twin and my nan every time I was around where they lived, which I think helped keep the communication channels open.”
Happy To Never See Her Again?
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“I still live with my twin, so of course sometimes I’m forced to answer ‘yes’ or something to a question, but I haven’t had a full conversation with her in two years.
Here are some reasons why she and I aren’t so close anymore:
1) She would always cause my parents to not trust me. For example, I would go out with my friends and she would suggest that I was doing illegal substances or something, leading to my parents limiting my freedom
2) Putting my family in a bad light. She would constantly tell people that we were gypsies, or that we were extremely rough, she would go around school shouting for someone to give her a smoke, and so for a timid person like me, it was quite overwhelming.
3) Theft. She was always stealing money from me and my family, presumably to spend on smokes.
So yeah, there are some more reasons as to why but that’s the main points.
My life has been better ever since I decided to reject her from me, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back on my decision.”