What is the twin etiquette?

My mother is a twin, they pretty much ran in different crowds and had separate friends. They were friendly with each others friends, but I don’t think either had the interest to hang out the others friends.
Lots of people have siblings, and you don’t invite each sibling out..I don’t really see it being an issue.

I am asking my daughter who is a twin, and is IM-ing with me. I will copy and paste her answer. Hold on…

Natalie D: u have 2 invite both cuz they can both play foot ball

Now you know.

Treat them as separate individuals because they are separate individuals.

Yeah, they’ll be happier if you treat them like two people I bet.

I am a twin and my mother made sure we both went to each other’s functions, invited! or not. I have twins, and I would never do that, I would let them handle it between themselves and their friends. you as the host, invite whichever twin you want, and let the fall-out work itself out, between the twins themselves and their friends. This isn’t the first or last time this will come up, for them.

I was quite surprised at Natalie’s answer. Generally she complains about Sam joining her and her friends.

Assuming you are school age, I think if they are the same sex you have to invite both, especially if you are friends with both. It would be different if the twins ran in completely different crowds. If one of the twins is not interested in the activity he/she can decline.

I have friends that are triplets. And when I invite one of them somewhere I ask her if she wants she can bring her sisters. But you don’t have to treat them like if they are stuck to eachother.

What are you inviting her/them to?
If it’s a group thing, and you are friends with them both equally, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t invite both of them.
But if you just want one friend to go with you, it’s ok to just invite one of them. Invite the other one next time perhaps?

@pdworkin Hilarious

I suppose the answer is more apparent if they are conjoined twins, eh?

If you knew two different people, and you were friends equally with both of them, would you assume you’d always have to invite both of them whenever you wanted to do something? If not (and I wouldn’t think you would), then I don’t see why you’d have to here. Twins are different people just like everyone else. Every activity you do doesn’t have to include every friend you know… ;-)

Twins are not different people like everyone else, they are sisters who are the same age. It is not like two different people from two different families.

@pdworkin That is the most amusing thing I’ve read all day.

I think you should start signing all of your posts with “Now you know.” In fact, it has now become morally imperative that you do so.

If Fluther had a .sig file perhaps I would.

…now you know.

I had a sister who was one year apart from me. When we shared a mutual friend we were always both invited. If not it would be for a clear reason. I think it would be quite awkward otherwise. I agree that you should invite both. Unless, of course, there is a clear reason to invite only one. I don’t think this is an issue of them being ‘separate individuals’ it is more of a friendship etiquette issue. You are friends with both so you treat them equally well, that includes invitations.

Since my brothers and I are pretty tight, if one of us gets invited somewhere, the others usually get invited along as well (that’s quite a few people considering that there are four of us). It doesn’t hurt that we all have fairly similar interests.

My youngest brothers are twins, and their friends almost always invited both of them together. Of course, one could make the argument that the friends all belonged to the more outgoing twin, and they invited the other twin along just to be nice…

If you want to invite only one of them somewhere or to something, I think you can if you go about it correctly. If you call and TwinNotWelcome answers the phone, that is the wrong time. You need to talk to TwinWelcome when TwinNotWelcome isn’t around. That way you aren’t excluding TwinNotWelcome, you are simply including TwinWelcome. You also need to have an answer prepared if TW asks, “Oh, can TNW come as well?” It doesn’t have to be a yes—it can certainly be something like, “I’d actually like to hang out with you for once, I feel like I only know you as a twin right now.”