Pisces and Pisces compatibility: two quick apologies and the problem neither names

Compare Pisces and Pisces by sign or birth date

The two Sun signs are filled in below. Switch to two birth dates and we look up Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars for both of you, so you can read the placements for your own dates. Uncertain signs are flagged. No birth time and no account needed.

Birth-date positions use Swiss Ephemeris calculations based on NASA JPL planetary data. Read about the data and precision. The historical date tables below use a separate PyEphem calculation.

Turning a quick sorry into a full one

Go back to the doorway on Thursday. Both apologies were real, and the evening that followed was a good one. What got skipped was the middle: saying what happened and what it cost. A quick sorry ends the moment. It doesn't arrange next Thursday.

Start with the one who forgot, and have them describe it without the word sorry. 'I lost track of time again, and that's the third Thursday.' Then the one who waited says what they minded, which may not be the cold or the cab at all. Here it's feeling forgotten. Only after that do you agree on one change with a day attached. The partner at home leaves at 6:25 on Thursdays, say, and the one on the train texts from the platform anyway.

Two smaller habits help. Keep 'don't worry about it' for things you've actually stopped worrying about. And practice saying no to each other on small things, which film, which night, which friend's party, so that a no doesn't feel like a rupture when a bigger one comes. Two easygoing partners also draw people who lean on them, the friend who always needs a lift or the coworker who always needs cover, and a couple that can say no to each other finds it easier to say no together.

Two fish tied tail to tail

The picture behind the sign comes from the stars. Ptolemy's Loeb editor, F. E. Robbins, describes the Pisces constellation like this: 'the two fishes are represented as being conjoined by a cord from tail to tail' (Tetrabiblos I.9, note 50). That describes a star figure. It isn't a rule about anyone born under the sign.

Two Pisces Suns share a sign, and a shared sign isn't one of the four aspects Ptolemy lists in I.13, so those aspect rules don't apply here. What they share is nearly everything else. Both are water signs, the group Cancer and Scorpio complete, both are night signs in Ptolemy, and both have Jupiter as the traditional ruler and Neptune as the modern one.

What pulls one Pisces to another is being understood without a long explanation. Each finds someone who takes a mood seriously without needing it explained, who doesn't push, and who'll follow a tangent instead of correcting it. For two people who are often the gentler one in a room, that comes as a relief. The risk grows from the same root. Two people who both shy away from an awkward moment will each wait, kindly, for the other to bring it up. For how the other eleven signs meet Pisces, there's a sign-by-sign Pisces guide.

Mercury, and why birth month matters for two Pisces

Mercury, the planet of talking and listening, never strays far from the Sun. On a Pisces birthday it sits in Aquarius, Pisces or Aries, and which one depends a good deal on the month. On February Pisces dates in our 1950–2005 sample, Mercury was in Aquarius more often than in Pisces, 55.5% of the time, and never in Aries. March dates spread across all three.

So two Pisces born a few weeks apart often have different Mercury signs. Two February Pisces dates share a Mercury sign in 50.6% of modeled pairs, but a February and a March date in only 37.2%. Cut the sign into thirds and the gap grows: a first-decan and a third-decan Pisces date share a Mercury sign in just 31.6% of modeled pairs. Type both birth dates into the comparison above to see each Mercury, or read Mercury by house in a free birth chart if you know your birth times.

The season moves fast under a Pisces birthday too. By our calculation for New York, daylight grows from 10 hours 49 minutes when the Sun enters Pisces to 12 hours 9 minutes when it leaves, about 80 minutes across one Pisces season. The light says nothing about either of you. It does show how much ground the Sun covers in one sign, and Mercury's sign can change across that same month.

Mercury in Aquarius is pictured as plain-spoken, quick to spot a pattern and say so. Mercury in Pisces is the voice that softens a point while making it. In a couple with one of each, the Aquarius Mercury may find it easier to name the problem. Two with Mercury in Pisces may both soften, which is kind right up to the day something needs saying twice.

The Pisces and Pisces date-sample estimates

These estimates pair two dates drawn independently from the 1950–2005 sample, with equal weight for every date within each Sun sign. They describe planetary combinations, not observed couples or relationship success.

Most common Venus pairings in this model: Aries with Aquarius (20.6%), Aries with Pisces (13.8%), Aquarius with Pisces (12.4%). Reversed Venus pairings are combined because both Sun signs are the same. Mars can occupy any sign with either Sun sign. The most frequent Mars signs on sampled Pisces dates are Aries (13.3%), Taurus (12.3%), Capricorn (11.6%), Pisces (10.8%).

Every Mercury and Venus figure here was counted from one noon UTC chart per day, 20,454 days in all, 1950 through 2005. Each pair figure matches two Pisces Sun dates picked independently of each other. It describes the sky on those dates, not how any couple apologizes.

Calculation method and downloadable date-sample tables

Love, sex and where Venus actually sits

Ptolemy gives Pisces a special place for Venus, the planet of love. In Robbins's translation Venus 'increases her own proper power all the more in Pisces' (I.19), which is why Pisces is called Venus's exaltation. Two Pisces Suns were born in the sign where tradition puts love at full strength. Their own Venus signs usually tell a different story. The most common Venus pairing for two Pisces dates is Venus in Aries with Venus in Aquarius, in 20.6% of modeled pairs counting either order, the largest top Venus pairing of the twelve Pisces pairings.

In that pairing one partner has Venus in Aries, quick and direct, a placement William Lilly's tables of 1647 count as Venus in detriment, and the other has an Aquarius Venus that wants room and conversation first. So the couple everyone pictures as soft and slow may have one person who wants things now and one who wants to talk it over. That matters in bed. Ask about pace instead of assuming a shared Sun means a shared rhythm, and say plainly what you like, since two people who hate to disappoint each other can both go along with something neither chose.

Check each partner's Venus by birthday before you guess. If both do turn out to have Venus in Pisces, how that placement loves is worth reading together. None of this changes for two women, two men or any other couple, because the reading follows placements, not genders.

Two Pisces friends, and the plan neither wanted

As friends, two Pisces are easy company: long talks, shared jokes and no pressure to perform. The habit to watch is agreeing for the other's sake. One suggests the concert, the other says yes to be nice, the first only suggested it because they thought the other wanted to go, and both spend a cold evening somewhere neither chose. A standing line helps. 'Tell me if you'd rather not, and I'll believe you.'

The same goes in families. Two Pisces siblings can cover for each other so well that nobody hears there's a problem. A Pisces parent with a Pisces child reads the child's mood easily and still needs to ask what the child actually wants. At work, two Pisces colleagues are generous with their time and both likely to take on extra, so one of them has to be the person who says, 'Let's not take that on this month.'

The long run, and who says the hard thing

Most astrologers would back two Pisces for the long haul. Sharing an element and a modality puts this among the warmer same-sign matches, and the everyday strength is plain: two people who forgive quickly and make a bad week lighter for each other without being asked. Can two Pisces be soulmates? They may feel understood unusually fast. The test is whether you can disagree without either of you pretending everything's fine.

The danger in a Pisces marriage is quieter than a fight. Small problems go unnamed and slowly pile up, until one partner feels unseen and can't say when it started. Forgiving each other comes easily to this pair. Noticing that you want different things (a city or a quiet town, children or not) takes more. It goes better when raising a problem is a normal part of the week, not an event, and when it isn't always the same person who does it. The dull jobs need the same care. Two people who both hate to nag can let the bills, the paperwork and the car service slide for months, so give each job one owner. And when one of you is low, the other tends to sink too, so agree ahead of time what help looks like for each of you: company, a walk, or an hour left alone. Sun signs only set the starting point, and two people's habits will tell you more than either chart.

For a closer reading, compare two full charts. A Sun sign can't show which of you is built to say the hard thing. Start with each Mercury, then check whether one person's Saturn aspects the other's Moon or Venus, the contact astrologers read for limits and responsibility. If either of you also has the Moon in Pisces, compare what that person needs when upset with how the other tends to respond. A contact-by-contact comparison of two charts lists those links in both directions.

The 6:40 train, with a February and a March birthday

Take the same Thursday with two birthdays: a Pisces born February 24 with Mercury in Aquarius, the commoner case for February, and a Pisces born March 14 with Mercury in Pisces. They don't share a Mercury sign, as happens in most February and March pairs.

If the March Pisces forgot the train, the February one, with the plain-spoken Mercury, may be the one to say it on the doorstep. 'That's three Thursdays. Can we fix Thursdays?' The March Pisces, softening as they listen, may hear an accusation in a sentence that was meant as a plan.

Now flip it, and make the February Pisces the one who forgot. The plain-spoken partner is now in the wrong, and the question becomes whether they can name their own pattern as easily as they'd name someone else's. The March Pisces may not press. Whether the third Thursday comes up at all now rests on someone admitting it about themselves, which is a harder sentence for anybody.

Pisces and Pisces questions