“So, you’re fucking yourself,” my friends announced playfully, to my cringing dismay.

My phone was making the post-dinner rounds and the New Man Approval Committee was hard at work, my most observant gay friends combing a selection of Insta pics featuring the suitor in question, Trevor. They’d look down at a photo, then back at me. As they cracked up, I could feel their critique coming, but I wasn't prepared to feel as embarrassed by it as I was. Boyfriend twins! Doppelbangers! Or so they suggested.

Amused, they pointed to my former mustache, then to the one he currently has. Our similar gym-worked builds were not lost on them either; neither were our round, clear-framed specs. Later, one friend saw a snap of Trevor on a cruise ship in a pose like one he'd seen me in before, texted me, and joked that he thought I’d gone on vacation. Not seeing what they were seeing (at first), I was genuinely spooked that I was signing up for a lifetime of people thinking I liked to fuck myself. (Which, as a thing to do, sounds fantastically convenient, but as a thing to seriously think and want? My friends, my therapist, and Dave Franco would have strong opinions about that.)

A fear I didn’t even know I’d be facing led me to consult Google. My precise search terms—“What does it mean when you date someone who looks like you?” and “Am I a narcissist?”—would surely tell me how to feel about this. I already knew I had to actively do everything in my power to set myself apart from Trevor, which meant it was definitely over for my mustache. Obviously, I'd get new glasses, too. Then I revisited the popular and wildly controversial BOYFRIENDTWIN Tumblr that first shook both gay and straight Twitter in 2014. This did not help: Was I one of them? And was that even a bad thing?

I stopped Googling and asked Dr. Harel Papikian, desperately inquiring about my magic man-mirror, what it meant, and whether I and we who court same-sex samesies are subconsciously or consciously narcissistic. Papikian, a psychologist who treats same-sex clients at his West Hollywood practice, says such practice is not all that unusual and—to my relief—not narcissism. Mostly it’s just the inevitably of desiring another dick.

“Same-sex attraction by definition means that we desire the body of our own sex," Papikian says. “Unlike straight couples, we can actually try and mold our own body, our appearance, and style to fit what we consider to be hot, sexy, and attractive. Boyfriend twins can be simply the result of our unique opportunity as gay men to mold ourselves in the image of our desire.”

Orlando-based Disney dads Steve Smith and Ben Gaetanos are spitting images of each other, their co-workers say. People even think their child looks like both of them. Their child is adopted. “People see what they wanna see,” Smith says.

In terms of the couple’s similar physical appearances, sure, they both have full, brownish, close-to-the-face beards; slender builds (though Steve, at 5 feet 4, is a few inches shorter than Ben); and their hair, also brown, is styled in a classic college cut. They’ve been called brothers before, and there was that time at Publix when a stranger called them twins, which Smith says is a real stretch. Considering their meet-cute—auditioning to play the same character for a Disneyland gig—it can read like the two former Evan Hansens who now date each other, which, sorry, brings new meaning to “You Will Be Found.” But Smith and Gaetanos actually bonded over a shared love of theater, not a mutual yearning to Netflix and chill with their doppelbanger.

Dr. Papikian says this gay-twin thing is unique to same-sex lookalikes. He notes that opposite-sex couples can obviously only look so much like each other, so for gay men, “there is greater cultural visibility and significance to the lookalike boyfriends phenomenon.”

Maybe that explains Smith’s initial hesitance to even be part of this story: His marriage is too often judged purely on superficial once-overs and interpreted as pure narcissism. Snap judgments—no, they don't want to be called gay twins or dad doubles, and definitely not brothers—make them cringe, because “it makes me question how I’m portrayed to the rest of the world and how I am perceived, as well as how we act towards each other," Smith says. "There is so much more to our relationship and to who we are as individuals.” The bum rap given to gay men who date men they sort of look like is unnecessary and shortsighted, considering these couplings make a lot of psychological sense, according to Papikian.

“[It] creates a sense of deep familiarity,” he says. “It goes something like this: ‘You look the same as me, hence you are the same as me. And if you and I are the same, you see and know me just as totally and completely as I see and know myself.’ This fantasy of sameness and mutual transparency can be a powerful aphrodisiac.” Perhaps most notably, “the same quality of closeness might be present in partners who look like reflections of each other,” he adds.

The last time I saw my “dating double,” I looked at him differently, embracing just how much we are alike: We are both invested in health and fitness (let me have this), and our bodies reflect that (I love that he wants to be my workout partner); we both feel sexy with a ’stache (he wants me to bring mine back, and I will and he doesn’t even have to shave his); and we both know good eyewear when we see it. Not weird, not creepy. Gay science says so! Paula Abdul was wrong! This is familiar, and that’s lovely and something I’m learning to cherish even if the world thinks otherwise.

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