ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 is the first of two intertwined chapters that explores how chronic twin-loneliness blights twins’ lived experiences. Loneliness is the distressing social pain individuals experience when their perceived interpersonal connections are neither as numerous nor as satisfying as the level needed for psychological well-being. This chapter begins by examining the twin-identity and how this leads adult twins particularly to crave profound interpersonal connection. Next, working from the perspective of all human beings, whether singletons or twins (but with an emphasis on the latter), this chapter examines what loneliness is and why humans experience it. In so doing, through introducing the concept of twin-loneliness, it addresses some of the reasons how and why loneliness particularly impacts on twins when they dwell in a perplexing, singleton-dominated, non-twin-world. Subsequently, this chapter presents and discusses various twin voices that shed valuable light on five dimensions of twin-loneliness: what it feels like; how frequently it is experienced; how intense it is; how it develops over the life span; and what psychological sense twins make of it.
