I am able to write this because The Signal decided to remove her veto on my posting in other forums (well not really but I’ll explain later). I suppose as usual I have a different view on vetoes. On one hand as someone in a long-standing couple I can’t see not giving The Signal some kind of say in any other relationship I might have. But on the other, I can also see that letting her have that kind of authority is power she might feel uneasy wielding.
We had an experience that demonstrated both sides of this in our relationship with The Star. She had decided to give limited veto power to her husband The Silent. For some time it seemed that The Silent had been checked out of what was going on with us three and we started to think he’d forgotten about using that power. At one point in our relationship the three of us decided that The Star-The Signal leg of our triad really needed attention, and we resolved that they should go out on a date. The Signal and I were both surprised when The Star called us a day or so before the date and told us that The Silent had vetoed it. Honestly we were both kind of crushed—The Signal because she’d been looking forward to the date so much, and me because I realized that this was The Silent’s Machiavellian way of interfering with our triad. Sure, he could have forbidden me from seeing The Star when the four of us were together, but then she just would have told him to fuck off and would have seen me anyway. And he didn’t seem to have any problem with the three of us going on a date together. Interfering with this date was his way of saying, “I don’t like you being with OnceAndFuture, but I’m too wimpy to say that, so instead I’m going to indirectly hurt him by hurting The Signal.” As a result things didn’t progress between The Star and The Signal and our triad suffered a lot.
And all it cost The Silent was his marriage! Well, probably. Their marriage wasn’t very healthy as it was. When I asked The Star once why she was still married, she rambled a bit before concluding that “The Silent is a nice guy and he does have my best interests at heart.” But his use of the veto there pulled the rug out from under her. She tried to put a brave face on it to The Signal, but privately she was really angry about it towards me (and said a whole lot of nasty things about him too). It wasn’t a nice thing to do and it also showed her that he really wasn’t all that interested in supporting her. She told me that she was going to blame him if our triad didn’t work out. The Star (and us) should have also shouldered that blame, but after the three of us split up it was inevitable their marriage would soon follow. It did.
When I saw this thread I talked to The Signal about veto power and that incident. We agreed on two things mainly. Firstly veto power is tricky because it assumes that one part of someone’s poly relationship has authority over another. The Silent wasn’t part of our triad (and he’d been invited to be part of our relationship but declined, so it’s not like he could say he was shut out) but he got to have the last word over it. The Signal thought about what that kind of power might mean for her, if she had it. She realizes that it’s going to be potentially difficult for her to say “I realize you could have a lot of fun with Ms. Potential Secondary, but I’m uncomfortable with her for reasons XYZ so I’m going to have to say no.” If she had a jerkish streak like The Silent and didn’t care about how I felt, she could probably get away with that. As it is, that’s authority she feels uncomfortable wielding. One of the reasons The Signal feels like she could be OK with me having a relationship with someone else is that she doesn’t have to be part of the relationship—she doesn’t have to go through the highs and lows and the emotions that she went through with The Star. Having veto power means she’s not in the relationship but she is part of it…almost in charge of it. With that kind of authority she can’t be “out of sight, out of mind.” And I would be constantly reminding her, “I have this balloon I really like playing with, and you have a needle and you can end my happiness at any moment. Just tell me when.”
The other thing we agreed about veto power is that it’s beyond boundaries. The Silent didn’t ever have to veto The Star and I going on a date…it was already understood as part of our boundaries at the time that we weren’t going to date. As long as we followed the boundaries (and I did even though The Star tried to break them), The Silent didn’t have to worry about that eventuality. So when The Signal and I talked recently about what situations she might have to use a veto in, she suggested “if you were dating someone at work, I’d veto that.” I said to her, we already agreed I wouldn’t do that, so I wouldn’t be dating someone at work and you wouldn’t have to use your veto on that. But what if you did start dating someone at work? she asked. Well in my opinion that wouldn’t be using a veto, that would be enforcing the boundaries we’d already agreed on. And maybe some disagreements might be boundary-related: “I know we didn’t talk about this, but I’m uncomfortable about you dating someone from our town, and I think that should be part of our boundaries too.”
To me a veto would be something like: “I don’t like the person you’re dating and I don’t feel comfortable with you seeing her.” There could be good reasons for the veto, or not (and our bad experience with The Silent’s veto was partly because he gave no reason for it and in his words “I don’t think I have to.”) But things like “we agree that, in general and for the time being, you abstain from going to poly meetups” feel more like boundary negotiation, or renegotiation. Similarly when we talked about me posting on other forums here, that felt more like renegotiating boundaries than lifting a veto. Vetoes to my mind are one-off discussions that fall outside of normal boundary negotiation. Boundaries, then, are part of a plan, a constitution if you will. Vetoes are things that didn’t fall into that plan. And I guess by nature they feel extra-authoritarial, because they are. What The Signal and I are working towards, I think, is minimizing the number of time she feels she needs to resort to vetoing.
Because, and I’ll say this as someone who’s now been on the receiving end of more than one veto which feels like those which the wife in nycindie’s example must have. To be brutally honest, they suck. I can’t describe how crushed I felt when The Signal told me that “for no reason other than to fuck with the shit, The Silent vetoed my date with The Star.” And I’m just saying this here but it wasn’t that long ago that The Signal decided to threaten to veto something, and that ended up hurting some people, which I’m not going to go into right now. I don’t know how you can veto something and have it not be at least partially damaging. From the standpoint of someone who’s been through it, even if there’s a good and logical explanation for why the veto was done there’s always going to be a part of you that thinks “we negotiated these boundaries in good faith, and now you’re going to throw up an extra boundary without talking to me about it.” Feeling, too, like the veto is a kind of red flag that says, “I’m not just OK with this, I’m actually not OK with anything. Because if I was truly OK with things, I’d be able to negotiate this the same way we’ve negotiated everything else. Throwing a veto down is my way of saying I can’t handle this situation in a way that either of us can be happy with.”
So having said all that, and keeping what Ravenscroft said in mind, why am I even thinking about letting The Signal have veto power? As someone who identifies as poly I agree with Ravenscroft said. The problem is, neither The Signal or The Silent identify as poly. And, tough as it might be to say, something has to give if I want this poly-mono relationship to continue to thrive. I can understand where The Signal is coming from. We’ve had a relationship that has been operating on a set of rules for the last 12 years, except for a seven-month detour. Now after all this time I put my hand up and admit, hey, I identify as poly, what are we going to do about that? Honestly there’s not a whole lot of room to negotiate between “we have a monogamous marriage” and “we have an understanding that one of us is poly but the other one is mono.”
The Cigarette Smoking Man once told Skinner “you can’t play poker if you don’t have any cards.” At this point I feel like allowing The Signal veto power is about the only negotiating chip I’ve got. Short of some kind of road-to-Damascus change of heart on her part—which I’m surely not going to be counting on—I’m left with a handful of options. I can admit defeat and say, nope, poly-mono relationships aren’t going to work, so either we separate or I stop identifying as poly. I could go behind The Signal’s back, which I just can’t do anyway, and then I’d really end our marriage. Or I can say, “Any time you feel like this is train is out of control, the emergency brake is right here, and only you can pull the lever.”
All I can ask for is that when she pulls it, it’s because she wants the train to stop, and not just to jolt all the passengers awake.
I don't have any authority over my husband, or any control over his actions. I can say veto all I want, but I can't actually *force* him to break up with someone. The only consequence to him if he ignores my attempt at a veto is the loss of our relationship. Soooo... it does seem to me like he has a choice.
