When the Cancer man and Libra woman couple meet, they feel like they live in their favorite fairy tale. The Libra woman is, of course, a beautiful princess. The Cancer man is Prince Charming, ready to take her home to his castle.
The fairy tales usually end with “And they lived happily ever after.” However, when the Cancer man and Libra woman go home to the castle in real life, somehow it gets more complicated than that.
Emotional connection
The Cancer man and Libra woman can connect emotionally over their shared values. They both are sensitive and empathic, but the Libra woman finds it easier to focus on helping others and dealing with their problems than exposing her own suffering. She is excellent at making logical plans to help others get out of their difficulties. Libra’s ability to be candid about her own feelings is hampered by her concern with her image. She likes to look strong and put together, sometimes to her own detriment.
The Cancer man is more open about his own struggles. The Libra woman can be a good listener as his friend, though she doesn’t push him to take their friendship to another level. In the context of a long-term relationship or marriage, the lack of reciprocity between them would be problematic. The Libra woman knows what balance is, and she knows this isn’t it. The Cancer man is also aware of the imbalance. He tries to correct it by encouraging the Libra woman to share more, but there’s only so much he can do.
The Libra woman would be more willing to open up to another fire or air type who would hear out her emotions with enough detachment to think through them logically. The Cancer man wants to help her, but the intensity of his approach pushes her away. The Libra woman is afraid that if she is honest about her emotions, she will trigger the Cancer man’s sensitivity somehow and introduce conflict into the relationship. This fear on her part is not really justified and only makes things worse.i
Libra woman finds it easier to focus on helping others and dealing with their problems than on exposing her own suffering. Click To TweetCommunication and intellect
The Cancer man thinks with his heart first and assumes his brain will catch up with the details later. If his brain doesn’t get there, he just overwhelms whoever he is debating with his emotions until they give in. Well, that’s one way to approach communication and intellect. This will scare the crap out of the Libra woman. She is used to things fitting in a logical plan. She is also used to coming up with the idea first and making her emotions adjust to it — kind of the opposite of the Cancer man’s strategy.
Cancer man’s emotional intensity will overwhelm Libra woman. He knows how to spread the guilt if they are fighting. She feels guilty in response, not only for not caring enough about whatever she was accused of not caring enough about but also for having caused disharmony in the relationship.
The Libra woman really wants a harmonious relationship, so she tiptoes around the Cancer man’s sensitivity. She tries to hold back her thoughts and feelings, but the Cancer man’s sensitivity sometimes crosses the line into intuition. He knows when she is discontent, but he may not be able to articulate it out loud. Instead, he just gets moody, which makes the Libra woman all the more resentful.
A Cancer man Libra woman’s long-term relationship or marriage will be miserable until they understand why they are together. It is an “opposites attract” situation, but each needs to be conscious of what they are drawn to in the other.
The Libra woman could probably benefit from becoming more aware and more expressive of her own emotions. She is drawn to the Cancer man’s emotional expression because she needs to grow more in that direction herself.
The Cancer man needs more intellectual clarity to balance his emotions. He may not admit it even to himself, but he is aware that the Libra woman has this quality he lacks. If he could avoid scaring her with big emotional blasts, she would feel freer to open up emotionally and share with him more.
The Cancer man thinks with his heart first and assumes his brain will catch up with the details later. Click To TweetCommon values
Cancer and Libra compatibility is actually reasonably strong in common values because they are both concerned with building a kinder, gentler world. The Cancer man and Libra woman could be great co-workers on a campaign for political or social reform. This couple finds fairness necessary on both small and large scales, and they both become upset overseeing anyone in pain. They agree that the world should do a better job of taking care of people.
The Libra woman wants to plan on how to make the world a better place and figure out her standing before she takes action. Like a more focused Gemini, she can get so caught up in planning and dreaming that she doesn’t get much done. The Libra doesn’t have as many ideas as fellow air sign Gemini. Still, the ones she does tend to hover around a standard of perfection that is difficult to achieve.
The Cancer man just gets in there and nurtures the people around him. Having a master plan is not his primary concern. If he had one, there would probably be a few inconsistencies in it. Most of the world’s difficult situations require balancing multiple competing interests, which the Libra woman may try to sort out, but the Cancer man tends to follow whoever has the loudest cry at the moment. The Libra woman envies how simple things seem to the Cancer man.
The Cancer man is good at convincing others to support him through emotional pleas. The Libra woman is jealous of his ability in this regard. She uses more logical arguments, but sometimes his approach works better.
When they come home from saving the world, both Cancer and Libra have a domestic side. The Libra woman enjoys decorating her home, especially in tasteful, muted tones. Her taste is rather predictable, so it is pretty easy to buy gifts for the Libra woman.
The Cancer man is generally willing to defer to her taste and appreciates her efforts. His priority is more comfort than aesthetics, but he does like a traditional look that is not too flashy or dramatic. The Libra woman can generally deliver that, even though sometimes she can be seduced by whatever is trendy at the moment. Meanwhile, the Cancer man will be happy to maintain the yard and even do a lot of the cooking.
Trust
The Cancer man tends to be reticent to trust people. He has had people giving him a hard time his whole life about being more emotional than society thinks men are supposed to be.
The symbol for Cancer, regardless of gender, is the crab, and all Cancers tend to retreat into their crab shells. The Cancer man is especially burrowed into his shell by the time the Libra woman comes along. He may still seem more touchy-feely than most guys, but he keeps the softest part of himself private until he feels really safe.
The Libra woman doesn’t do a great job bringing the Cancer man out of his shell, and this means that the Cancer man Libra woman match might never get off the ground. The Libra woman just doesn’t want to spend her time on that. She is popular and probably has other potential suitors. So if the Cancer man doesn’t get over himself quickly enough to make a move on her, she will move on.
Even if Cancer and Libra get together, the other potential suitors will always be in the back of the Cancer man’s mind. The Libra woman is friendly and might be read as flirtatious regardless of what she intends.
A big part of what makes the Libra woman attractive to most people is that she tends to see the best in them. She treats others that way because that’s how she wants to be treated herself. If the Cancer man looks at the Libra woman and sees only the worst possibilities, she will be repelled.
The Libra woman is more loyal than the Cancer man might imagine she is. Still, she is willing to leave a relationship if it is not to her liking.
A big part of what makes the Libra woman attractive to most people is that she tends to see the best in them. Click To TweetSex and intimacy
Libra and Cancer compatibility in sex and intimacy is not very good because they are after different things. Cancer, ruled by the Moon, looks to sexual intimacy for an experience of nurturing and being nurtured. This might even cross the line into a maternal vibe, though the Cancer man is definitely more cuddly than kinky. As for erogenous zones, he might be drawn to his partner’s breasts.
However, the Libra woman is not interested in being the Cancer man’s mommy, and she will recoil at anything that hints of that. Libra, ruled by Venus, is into sexual pleasure for the sake of it. Hence, her partner had better put some imagination in her bedroom entertainment.
Libra likes to think of herself as sophisticated. If there is a hot new sexual trend being talked about, she wants to try it out so she can lord it over her female friends that she is in the know. The Libra woman’s love for the idea of herself being seen as more clever than others can override whether or not she actually enjoys whatever it is on a physical level.
The Cancer man finds all of that to be the stupidest thing he has ever heard. He’s not even flattered by the extra inches the Libra woman probably gives him in girl talk with her friends to make them jealous. Instead, he wishes she would be more respectful of their privacy as a couple.
The Cancer man is very traditional, so sex is not the game that it can be for the Libra woman. In his mind, sex and intimacy should ultimately lead to family and security. He is vanilla and doesn’t feel bad about it.
The Libra woman is into the bedroom kinks because she genuinely enjoys the pursuit of pleasure. She might put up with the Cancer man if he gave her social status in other ways. Otherwise, she would be likely to dump a partner who was not making an effort to keep her excited.
Libra likes to think of herself as sophisticated. If there is a hot new sexual trend being talked about, she wants to try it out. Click To TweetRelationship challenges
Why do Libras and Cancers clash? On a technical level, their Zodiac signs represent conflicting elements. Libra is associated with air, and Cancer is associated with water. Air fuels fire, and water functions well side by side with the earth.
What do air and water have to do with one another, though? The simple version is that air is the intellectual world and water is the emotional world. Still, it’s actually not quite that simple. The Libra woman has emotional needs, but she shows them through the filter of her intellect. Likewise, the Cancer man has the intellectual capability, but he expresses it through his emotional nature filter.
If Cancer and Libra fall in love, they need to be aware that the other person has the same needs but a different language for expressing them. Even Libra’s status-seeking excesses, which look utterly bizarre to Cancer, are ultimately a roundabout way of looking for security. Cancer pursues more directly.
Why can’t Libra just say to Cancer, “I want security just like you do?” Libra tends toward hinting and being overly subtle. Communication is one of the most challenging things between Cancer and Libra. Even in a best-case scenario, Cancer and Libra would likely spend more time translating and decoding than communicating. If they insisted on sticking it out, they could both wind up learning a lot from each other and becoming well-rounded people. Still, it would be a tremendous amount of work.
If Cancer and Libra fall in love, they need to be aware that the other person has the same needs but a different language for expressing them. Click To TweetAre Cancer and Libra a good match?
Cancer man Libra woman compatibility is better as friends or co-workers rather than lovers or spouses. They ultimately come to some of the same answers in life. Still, they get there by such different paths that they will continually struggle to understand each other. Each has qualities that the other lacks and could benefit from developing further. However, a more bearable dose of that push to grow would come in lower-pressure relationships with friends and family, not in one’s primary romance.
A big part of the trouble, in fact, has to do with the Cancer man Libra woman couple’s relationship with the outer world. The Cancer man always wants to cocoon, creating an intense twosome between him and his partner.
The Libra woman can have trouble being single for too long, and she can sometimes become overly focused on her relationship to the point she forgets about her friends. Eventually, she does need to come up for air and be part of a larger social world, though, and the Cancer man can feel threatened by this.
The Cancer man and Libra woman both have qualities that others would appreciate. Unfortunately, they tend to discover the worst in one another. Cancer finds that Libra can be shallow, flirtatious, and concerned with her image to the point she neglects more serious issues. He misses that she is a clear and creative thinker who is trying to make the world a better place.
Similarly, Libra finds that the Cancer man can be neurotic, clingy, and manipulative. She doesn’t appreciate his capacity for nurturing as much as others might, in part because she finds it challenging to let herself be nurtured in that way.
Libra and Cancer are both known for their good intentions, in the sense of their lofty ideals. They more or less are aware of the good intentions of one another. If the Cancer man Libra woman couple is determined to stay together, they need to make an effort to catch one another doing good things. They may be pleasantly surprised at how many instances they find once they begin to look.