To be really freaked out that I have a 'Doppelganger' cousin

[TheDevilWearsPrimark]

It sounds like bollocks but it really isn't.

I only knew of my cousins existence three years ago. She is my uncles 'love child' and I first met her at my grandfathers funeral.

We were born in the same month and year and are the spitting image of each other. We did the exact same degree and have the same GCSE results, apart from in one subject,

If that wasn't odd enough she left her abusive husband the same week I left mine (we weren't in contact at the time)

And now tonight she has called me in tears as her new DP has decided to back away from the relationship because she has too much going on. I had the exact same conversation with my DP yesterday,

It's spooky.

It does sound weird and I'm sure that it must have been a shock when you first clapped eyes on her. Do you think that you would have found the coincidences so odd if you'd known her all your life? You don't mention the quality of your relationship with her e.g. do you like her?

I love her, we talk all the time and talk as if we are best friends, but also (and she feels the same) I feel oddly repulsed by her at times.

In fact we emailed each other a couple of months ago, for no reason other than to catch up and both sent almost identical emails saying how amazing it was that we have so much in common, yet also we feel a bit like talking to each other is holding up a mirror to ourselves and having to confront things we don't wish to.

It's bloody freaky but I kinda like it.

Yes, I can see why you might have mixed feelings about it. It sounds like stories I've read about twins who've been separated at birth but meet up later to find that they have led strangely parallel lives (although one never knows how much truth there is in these reports, once they've been mangled around by the media).

Be interesting to see how things develop in the future. I kind of envy you!

Do you have any pictures of each other to show? It sounds fascinating.

I once worked with someone who kept saying i was identical to her cousin in the states, it was very off putting as she said it all the while

That really is spooky.

Genes are so fascinating - my DS3 looks nothing like either me or DH, but looks very like my father did. I was FB snooping recently on my American cousins - the grandchildren of my father's first cousin. And one of the photos was absolutely an older DS3 looking back at me - it was very unnerving.

My DD really doesn't resemble either me or DH, she is the image of her aunt (dh's sister though). I could never see it when she was a baby and people would say she was very similar. I found some old photo's of DD recently and couldn't work out whether it was DD or SIL I was looking at.

I've put the only pic I have of her on my profile

Come see...

is that you in bottom pic and her top pic?
very very similar

weird that you are slightly repulsed by each other

Glad you agree, I'll have to try and get some better pictures.