Högskolan i Skövde

Twins have a constant companion from the very beginning and if the relationship with the co-twin has been aclose one, there might be difficulties in finding a marriage partner. Based on 35 life stories of older twins, this study focuses on personal experiences of establishing the marital relationship in relation to the co-twin relationship. The participants are a subsample of two Swedish longitudinal twin studies, SATSA and the Gender study and they were MZ/DZ, female/male twins aged 70-91 years. All except one was or had been married. The life stories were analyzed with content analysis. The results showed that (n =16) of the participants experienced that their marriages were negatively affected by the twin relationship and (n =19) did not experience any negative influence at all. The most common reasons for the negative influence on marriages was that the spouses of the twins did not get along with one another or the co-twin and the second common reason was that the spouse felt threatened by the close twin relationship. The consequences of the negative influences were that the twins in a pair distanced themselves from one another. Spouses of the twins who described no influence on their marriage were accepting of the twin relationship and got along well with one another and the co-twin. Those twins who were married to two siblings or friends had the most regular contact frequency. The study showed that when twins get married, it involves not only the two individuals marrying each other, but also the relationship with the co-twin as well as the spouse of the co-twin.