Spotlight on “Is Veto Abuse?”

This blog post is part of a series on the new, vastly expanded More Than Two site. This essay spotlights the Veto as a Form of Abuse page. Look for more spotlights in the coming days and weeks!

Social isolation is a tool of abuse. If you read any books or articles or research papers on intimate partner abuse, this idea pops up over and over again. In fact, some people consider social isolation—control over who you’re allowed to see, to spend time with, to be friends with, to communicate with, to associate with—one of the defining elements of abuse.

What does this mean for the practice of veto in polyamorous relationships?

I will admit I’ve struggled for decades with the idea of veto. Veto, which is becoming less and less common but is still a relationship dynamic that’s prevalent in polyamory, is the idea that if Alice is dating Bob, and Bob starts dating Cindy, and Alice doesn’t like Cindy, Alice can order Bob to end things with Cindy and Bob will do it.

I’ve never vetoed a lover’s other lover, but I’ve had lovers veto my partners, and I’ve been the subject of veto. At one time, many years ago, I considered veto a regrettable but sometimes necessary tool to help the people in a polyamorous relationship feel more secure, but as the years have gone by and I’ve learned more about intimate partner abuse and the harm caused by veto, I’ve become more and more skeptical of the idea.

Today, I am pretty comfortable saying veto is inherently abusive.

It’s often defended by its adherents (including me, in the 1980s and 1990s) as a way to make people feel safe and secure; it’s an ejection seat that can jettison the people in a relationship from a bad situation. What’s wrong with that?

Well, let’s apply the same idea to a monogamous relationship. “I need to be able to control who you see and speak to in order to feel secure with you.” What would we say about a monogamous person who told his girlfriend something like that?

Veto By Drama

It gets a lot more complicated, though, when we think about “stealth veto,” or veto by force of drama: a veto where there’s no explicit agreement in place that person A gets ultimate say over Person B’s relationships, but rather Person A becomes Grima Wormtongue, always whispering in Person B’s ear about how terrible Person C is. I’ve been in this situation too, where we had no veto arrangement in place but instead my lover starts smearing another lover, or even someone I find interesting but I’m not in a romantic or sexual relationship with.

For a long, long, long time, my general approach has been “all models over 18,” which is a shorthand way to say “we’re all adults, adults get to decide who they will and won’t associate with, and it’s not my place to tell other people how they should get along, who they should be friends with, or how they should relate to others.”

But people can be manipulative, and I’ve only recently started seeing just how pernicious and destructive this kind of manipulation (which often takes the form of gaslighting: “You’re too idealistic, you see the best in everyone, it’s not your fault you can’t see how terrible Person C is”) can be.

I’ve participated in, and even enabled, this behavior, by stepping back and saying “hey, you two sort this out, it’s nothing to do with me” when a lover has decided she doesn’t like my existing partner, or when an existing partner has decided she doesn’t like my new lover. By stepping back, I opened myself up to being manipulated by whoever was whispering in my ear like Grima.

I’ve also had this weaponized against me. It’s shitty either way, and honestly, I’ve learned that being hands-off, being all “you two are adults so you need to sort things out between you by yourselves, it’s not my problem” taken to an extreme can make me an enabler of toxic behavior.

So yes, on the one hand, saying something like “you two must get along whether you want to or not” is toxic behavior—I’ve had a lover say that to me and it was creepy and gross.

On the other hand, “if you treat the person I love contemptuously (and worse, if you whisper in my ear that the person I love deserves contempt) that’s not my problem, you’re both adults, you two figure it out, it’s not my place to tell other grown-ass adults how to behave” is also toxic behavior.

How do you square that circle? I legitimately don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it out. This isn’t something that the polyamory scene has developed good institutional knowledge about.

Where the Promise of Veto Goes Wrong

Back to veto.

Overt or covert, veto is based on the idea that the first person to come along has the right to dictate a lover’s other relationships, which is, if you think about it, a little strange…and kind of disrespectful to the people who come along after.

Never have I ever seen someone use a veto, directly or indirectly, and also express any concern whatsoever for the person being vetoed (or, for that matter, the partner they ostensibly “love” but are now hurting).

The narrative, of course, is that the person being vetoed is toxic (where “toxic” all too frequently means “disagreeable to me”), and the standard narrative of veto is it’s a way to intervene if a lover starts dating someone new who turns out to be problematic.

But as my wife Joreth recently pointed out,

Here’s another part of the narrative to get out first – when a relationship is toxic but you haven’t ever had a healthier one, getting involved in a healthier one via polyamory often makes the pre-existing toxic relationship stand out more as toxic.

So a new partner often looks a lot like they’re “stealing” someone because that mutual partner finally gets a taste of what a healthy relationship feels like and gravitates towards it, prompting the toxic partner to do more toxic things, which pushes the mutual towards the healthier person…

Polyamorous folks who favor veto rarely seem to consider that perhaps, just perhaps, they might be the problematic element themselves. But then, abusers who socially isolate a victim rarely recognize what they’re doing as problematic; it is often the case that those who abuse do so not because they wake up thinking “I’m going to be an abusive person today!”, but rather “I feel scared and insecure and the only way I can keep these feelings at bay is by controlling my partner.”

And yet, in a nutshell, isn’t that exactly what veto is?

So why talk about this at all? Why even have these conversations about veto? If some folks feel better with a veto, why not let them do their own thing?

Well, for one thing, I genuinely do believe veto causes quantifiable, unnecessary harm.

But for another, I saw this image floating around on the Internet a while back, and it really resonated with me:

When you decline to create or to curate a culture in your spaces, you’re responsible for what spawns in the vacuum.

We live in a society that increasingly favors displays of performative cruelty and ever-increasing ideological purity over nuanced discussions that actually seek to build sound ethical behavior.

I’ve participated in that. When my former partner Shelly, who had argued passionately against veto when she was on the barrel end but had quite different views when she was on the trigger end, told me of another lover she wanted me to break up with, “can you believe she still thinks she gets to be with you?”, I meekly acquiesced and ended my relationship with the person Shelly disapproved of…something I still regret to this day.

I would like to do better. I would like to see the whole of the polyamory scene do better. We get there by talking about these things.