The seventh of zodiac signs, Librans are always associated with balance, harmony, sweetness, and all things soft and pleasant. Well, Librans are worshipers of all these things, and achieving harmony in everything is a part of their daily agenda. But you will be very far away from the truth if you consider a Libra man or woman to be only a sweet soul who never indulges in confrontation of any sort. Librans are champions of justice, and they will bring out their swords of steel anytime justice has been deprived. They are exceptionally logical people who will argue and fight with you in their own sophisticated way, until rationality has won. You may feel that you are successfully taking a Libran for a ride, but believe me, the Libran already knows and is willingly going for the ride because of some hidden agenda of his/her own. Librans are perfect personifications of the Chinese concept of Yin-Yang. That is to say, that there are some feminine elements (or what we call feminine elements) in every male Libra, and there are some typical masculine traits in every female Libra. Want to find out more about these Venus-ruled, scale-bearing people born between September 24th and October 23rd? Read on then. We shall give you a well-dissected Libra woman and man, in the following paragraphs. Didn't I tell you that every Libra woman has some perfectly masculine traits, in the last paragraph? Well, it is absolutely true. But, you might not be able to detect them right away, for she believes in garbing her super-strong personality behind that heavenly smile, that is capable of brightening up the gloomiest of days that you have seen. Librans - both male and female - are known for their charming smile, and somehow the fairer sex makes the most of it. She has a mind of her own and will not shirk away from voicing her opinions when she deems necessary. Her tone will remain soft and her manner still very smooth, but she will present her well-sequenced thoughts in a manner that will tell you that she means business. I will give you an example of this. Imagine you are on your 15th date with your Libran partner, and both of you are absolutely smitten. She shares your dreams and visions for the future, and calls you her soul mate when you tell her that you eventually want one daughter and two dogs in the house. She is besotted with your desire to build your personal library in the biggest room of your future house. She is surer of your ability to achieve all your goals in life, more than you are. She will learn your mother tongue if yours is different than hers. All in all, you just think that she will basically agree with anything that you utter. All is hunky-dory, and then bam! You jokingly suggest how wonderful it will sound when people start calling her Mrs. Geller (your surname being Geller). And she promptly but very lovingly tells you that she does not want to give up on her maiden surname post-marriage. Of course you are caught off-guard, because this girl loves every bit of you, and here she suddenly refuses to take on your name and follow a convention that has existed for centuries. So you ask her why, and then will you understand what a strong sense of self a Libra woman truly has. She will start with how her name and surname has been her identity since the day she was born, and how she loves it that way. She will then go on to explain how she will build a home with you and accept everything you have to offer unflinchingly, and how her surname is all she wishes to retain, for it will keep alive her identity as an individual entity. If you are still unconvinced about this entire belief-system of hers, she will give you her brightest smile and tell you how she wishes to retain her surname because she got it from her father, and her father is the man she loves the most in the world. So, even if she is willing to build a whole new world with you, she wants to retain her link with her other familial world by retaining her surname. Her voice will be smooth as silk and her tone will be very authoritative. She will retain her composure while she fights for her right to identity. If you keep arguing with her, she will pull out the big guns and explain how your future children, whom she will nourish in her womb for nine whole months, will never get to use her surname, even though she will be the mother. She will not mind that, in spite of it being quite unfair. All she is asking for is continuing with her name, while giving you her all. Believe me, you will never be able to convince her otherwise, and in the end, her presentation might just begin to make sense to you. She has already had an elaborate argument about this in her own head, and weighed both sides very carefully before arriving at this conclusion. She is the scale-bearer, there is no way she has not. If you are the chauvinistic types however, this girl is hardly for you. She does not gulp down warped logic just to keep her man happy. Trust me. Let me warn you about something else as well. NEVER, while having the discussion above, dare to even remotely imply that she will become your property, post-marriage. Believe me, she will discard you from her list of marriageable men! Immediately. She will throw her diplomatic nature out of the window at that very instance, and fight you like a tigress. Her self-respect is way too high, and her softness is not a sign of her weakness. She is consciously malleable, not helplessly so. This brings us to the next trait - Librans just thrive in healthy, constructive arguments. They love weighing the pros and cons about everything. And I literally mean everything! From something as trivial as the right kind of hangers for trousers, to something as hardcore as the shifting ideologies of a well-known politician, a Libra woman can debate about anything and everything under the sun, until a logical conclusion has been reached. And it does not even have to be another person. She can have these arguments in her head all by herself. And she will show equal passion for both the trivial and the hardcore. Their point is not to rebel without a cause or fight for the sake of fighting. They really wish to attain near-perfection in everything, and that can only be attained by throwing in different viewpoints and then looking into a matter. They like to gauge things from all angles before reaching a conclusion. And they do admire people who voice their opinions. They accept sound logic coming from another party, and can go as far as accepting the folly in their own viewpoint, if necessary. No ego there. Libran women are seldom judgmental people. They will never make a snap assessment about you. If you tell them that you have committed murder, rest assured that they will ask you a number of questions in order to understand what forced you to commit the crime, and then form an opinion about the act. You can tell her about all your idiosyncrasies, no matter how weird they are, and chances are she will fall in love with you for those very foibles. For her, your foibles and mannerisms make you unique and exclusive. However, if you are not as tolerant of her idiosyncrasies as she is of yours, you will fall from her eyes in no time at all. She has no respect for injustice, no matter how trivial it may appear to you. Respect to her is always mutual, and if you do not get that, too bad. So, are these women always the epitomes of balance and grace that they are so often portrayed to be? Well, they are quite balanced and graceful a good lot of times and as often as they can help it. But you will have to actually see to believe just how restless and worked-up they can be when faced with indecision. To and fro, to and fro - the continuous oscillation can drive anyone around these people up the wall. An asylum appears to be a saner place in comparison to a room boarding a Libra woman in the throes of indecision. She will turn the world-upside down in search of that singular plane on which her scales can rest in perfect equilibrium again. Once that is achieved (and that is always achieved!), she will beam a purring ball of sunshine and joy again, and you will forget those moments of hair-plucking agony almost instantaneously. Libra women are exceptionally romantic creatures. They are in love with the concept of love. Considering that these women are the children of Venus, the Goddess of love (as well as beauty, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory), they are simply delightful romantic partners. They detest being single for long durations, and if that is the case, these women become depressed and cynical. They cannot enjoy anything to the fullest during those periods. Whereas, a Libran in love is a deeply happy, buoyant, and spirited personality. She is capable of spotting the best in the worst of situations, and works ardently to nourish her relationship. Remember how I told you that she has a very sound sense of equality? Well, she treats herself as an equal in her relationships. This simply means that she takes it upon herself and shares all the responsibilities with her partner. She thrives in his success, and is equally distressed when he is upset. She truly becomes the better half of her partner in every respect. She keeps the ship from rocking every time an emergency surfaces, with iron fists, and seldom sees it as her partner's responsibility to protect or shield her. She is an equal, remember? She does not flinch when her man needs her to be his support-system, and fights valiantly. She does not seek credit for what she does, because she sees it as her duty and the ideal state of being. But she is also feminine enough to let her partner shine as she stands behind him beaming proudly once the storm has passed. Her man becomes her first priority in life. This means that she offers to love this man as much as she loves herself, and can go to any extent to nurture her relationship. It is her primary goal to completely satiate and fulfill her man even in bed. She wants to deliver what he wants. And since Librans invented romance and then upgraded it to make it even better, they are champions of achieving carnal, emotional, and intellectual compatibility. A female Libran loves the good things in life - roses, champagne, music, books, cashmere, perfume. She thrives in the middle of beauty and luxury. She hates anything that is too loud, for it proves to be jarring for her tastes. She is soothed by subtlety, and sophistication is absolutely everything. She is disturbed by a man wearing yellow pants on a bright and sunny day, and she is vocal about it. As vibrant as her nature is, she loves pastels and conventional cuts when it comes to her outfits. She likes her fragrances to be mild. That does not necessarily mean that she needs them to be sweetly flowery. She can gladly opt for a man's perfume, if it is mild and musky. You see, masculinity and femininity are just words for her. She believes in equality. A Libran will never ask you to stop smoking because 'you are a girl'. That is too flimsy a reason for them, almost bordering on sacrilege. A Libran will ask you to stop smoking because 'only a woman can give birth and that is a blessing'. They seek class and repel crass - man or woman! Their love for luxury often make these women extremely unwise with money. They are spendthrifts of the ultimate order. Even though Libra women mostly work both before and after marriage, they often have to pay off their bills with financial help from their fathers, brothers, or husbands. They love all things pretty, and they need to own everything their eyes catch, no matter how impractical. Another thing that you absolutely need to know about these women is the alternating manic-depressive streaks in them. When in the manic mode, she will work continuously without a break. She will clean, wash, mop, dust, broom, sew, correspond, cook, iron when at home, and then churn out one brilliant project/idea when in office. Her tenacity to complete all tasks - her own or someone else's - will scare a regular observer. Her energy levels will astound everyone around her. This stage can usually be noted when something is deeply troubling the female scale-bearer. There is some knot she cannot untangle mentally, some dilemma there seems to be no way out of. Her mental anxiety then manifests physically, and she needs to keep her hands continuously moving in order to keep from going insane. The moment she puts her finger on the solution, she calms down, slows her pace, completes the leftover tasks nevertheless, and collapses on the bed for a deep and tranquil hibernation period. She won't move a muscle when she is resting. This is her rejuvenation period, and nothing can stir her until her mental faculties are good to go again. All in all, they are creative people who love the exotic and beautiful. They make for the best hostesses, who will shower you with all the care in the world, and manage to successfully engage in the most constructive and analytical discussions you will ever have. They are beauties with brains, who are terrible money managers but fantastic mothers who love and nourish their children, and yet never refrain from scolding their children if they are disobedient or remotely disrespectful towards their father. One word - CHARMING! Please note my use of capital letters, because these men are charm personified. They can rescue an almost lost battle with just a smile, and the opponent won't even know what hit them! These men are warm, intelligent, smooth, and all those great adjectives you can think of. The rotten plank? INDECISION. They beat their female counterparts hands down when it comes to being indecisive. They take unbelievably long periods of time to make up their minds about almost anything. In fact, they are victims of their own indecision and tendency to analyze every single thing under the sun. How are they different from Libra women in their analysis? They do it in a dry and unemotional manner. They deal with facts and facts alone. Emotional convolutions in people is an alien concept to them. A male scale-bearer will call a murderer a murderer, and at most go on to assess that the son killed the father in cold blood out of hatred. From what stemmed a hatred, this extreme will not be his concern or subject of dissection. He is not necessarily judgmental towards the boy. He is simply practical and uninterested in the deeper workings. He is too caught up in untangling the abstract metaphysical mysteries of the world, in order to pay attention to details which come in the way of his crystal clear logic. His concerns are with the macrocosm. The microcosm is not his domain. He is extremely misunderstood because of this trait of his. You see, he thinks about the greater cause of things. This makes him appear to be unemotional and unsentimental. He is not made in a manner where he can understand how his unwavering logic, objectivity, and practicality can actually crush the person in front of him. To him facts and only facts can lead to rock-solid deductions. What emotions? So, if you are a super-romantic soul who cannot bear a single harsh word from your lover, and are prone to taking every word uttered way too personally, stay far away from him. He is definitely not your type, and you are not his. His head is way high up in the clouds to deal with your constant and illogical flooding of emotions. A Libra man is very romantic. In fact, they can charm the heads off the most unromantic girls on earth, and convince them to say yes to marriage, two hours after having met them. They are wizards with words, and as I have told you before, the Libra smile is legendary. They are well-read, classy people, who will sweep you off the floor effortlessly, and you will swear that Cinderella's Prince Charming does exist. However, the real story unfolds only after you are completely smitten by them. You see, these men seldom know where to steer their love story after it has begun. They start deliberating whether they really like you or want to be with you, only AFTER they have wooed you into submission. He deliberates and deliberates and deliberates some more, and the entire process takes so long that it often leaves his supposed romantic interests heart-broken. His inability to call the shots fast does cause a lot of heartache. And thanks to his supremely logical mind, he moves on from a failed relationship so fast, that it seems ruthless and insulting. But that is just him. He cannot mop about a lost cause for a long time. To his mind, it was never meant to happen anyway. These men somehow cannot understand the simple fact that sometimes a speedy and honest 'no' proves to be much less hurtful than keeping the girl hanging in anticipation. If he did understand this concept, he would have never indulged in his painfully prolonged rumination sessions, because then he would have sensed the extents to which he was being unfair to the girl in question. And being unjust is the most grave crime anyone can commit. Sometimes, these men are made to realize just how inhuman they are being because they cannot seem to make up their mind, and when they do, the guilt they experience is immense. So to make up for all the pain they cause, they often end up proposing marriage to the girl, and this again leads to very quick divorces. You see, while waddling in all their guilt, they forget that the girl in question might not be right for them at all. Their vision and logic both get blurred, and therefore, most Libra men have at least one early divorce during their lifetime. But you know what? These men can be extremely loving, devoted, and supportive, once they have found 'The One' for themselves. The scales then achieve perfect equilibrium and bliss prevails. But even then, there are a few things that should be kept in mind in order to keep the relationship sailing blissfully forevermore. For a Libra guy, his home is his shrine, where he seeks refuge and rests after all the socializing and creative brainstorming sessions at work. The space that he lives in, therefore, is more than a few rooms with walls. His home is the space where he seeks to replenish his mental and physical life juices. And so, it has to be a place where he wants to come back to. He likes nothing loud or uncoordinated in the house. The upholstery has to match the carpet. The bathroom tiles cannot be a vibrant neon green. The kitchen sink has to be clear all the time. Dust cannot be caking furniture pieces in the house. The decibel levels of no electronic gadget in the house can be high. Food cannot be eaten right out of the utensil that it has been cooked in. His wife cannot be smelling of fish just because she has lovingly cooked it for him. He likes a soothing environment when he is at home and even the slightest disruption disturbs him beyond fathomable limits. You see, the house of even an unmarried Libra man is impeccably maintained. He will have every amenity at home in order to carry on with his lifestyle in a lavish manner. He will never drink wine out of a normal glass. He will have a set of 12 wine flutes in the kitchen for those occasions when his friends drop in and will be drinking wine in one of those flutes even when no one is around. He will never use a towel to take his baked chicken out of the oven. He will use oven mitts to do the job, and will probably have three more of them for the times when the first mitt needs to be washed. He will wear an apron when cooking, and keep his bed spic and span. His clothes will always be ironed, and the larder always replenished and full. So, when he gets married, he will not be very wrong to expect the same kind of cleanliness and organization from his wife. They are very helpful around the house themselves. So, if the wife does not soak the oil out of the French fries using paper napkins or keeps the laundry piling up for two weeks, it will disturb the man's inner peace tremendously. And he is deeply affected by a disharmonious environment at home. Even a mismatched doormat and towel in the bathroom can cause a great deal of agony to this man. And it will manifest through his behavior. He will either spend the maximum time away from a disheveled home, or spend most of his time at home sleeping. He will stop cuddling and whispering sweet nothings into your ear or give you a hug while leaving for office. He will not know exactly what is bothering him. He will feel that something somewhere is amiss, but will not be able to put a finger on the problem. And his absolute need to avoid confrontations will mostly keep him from bringing it to the notice of his better-half. What is worse is, he will seek harmony outside in such a case, and a more organized female may start to draw his attention a little by little. You will lose out on him and be left in the dark as to what caused the disharmony and as to what came in the way of communication. These things might appear to be quite trivial to you, but to the Libra man, his mental peace is in direct relation to his physical environment, and his inner and outer world must be perfectly balanced. Period. So, give him the picture-perfect home you only see in magazines, and be a goddess who never has sticky masks covering her face at night. He will romance you like a god himself, and it will all be worth it, I swear. He will even be a loving, yet authoritative father to the children. He will tell them stories, take them for cultural outings, give them advice on their dating lives, and will know how to firmly say a 'no' when they are throwing tantrums. A thing that can be quite commonly noted among Librans of both sexes is that they do not take criticism very positively, although they may not show their resentment to the critic in question. Criticism makes them feel insecure, and this, sort of, distorts a Libra's sense of equilibrium of the self.