Glossary
Veto
An agreement between two people whose consequences a third person carries.
What is a veto?
Veto is a partner’s right to forbid a certain activity or a certain contact, regardless of what the other wants. A veto belongs to an agreement between partners, not to a scene. The word turns up mostly in polyamorous and cuckold agreements, where it settles who may not be dated.
| Literal meaning | Latin veto, “I forbid”, the first person singular of vetare |
| Where it occurs | agreements within polyamory, open relationships and cuckolding |
| Not to be confused with | a hard limit, which is about yourself, and a safeword, which breaks off a scene |
| Who it affects | usually a third person, who wasn’t at the table when the agreement was made |
| The trickiest form | the soft veto: no ban, but making the contact so unpleasant that it ends by itself |
Where the word veto comes from
From Rome, and originally as protection of the weaker party. The Online Etymology Dictionary gives veto as the Latin “I forbid”, the first person singular of vetare, and calls it the technical term for the protest a tribune of the people could raise against a measure of the Senate or the magistrates. In English the word stands from the 1620s for the constitutional right, and from 1792 for any right to forbid something. So anyone who casts a veto in a relationship is literally using a verb in the first person.
Why people agree on a veto, and what it costs
Because it gives peace of mind to the one who’s afraid, and that peace is real. A veto makes an agreement concrete: there’s one emergency brake, and as long as it’s there, many people dare to let the rest go.
The price falls on someone else. Jennifer Arter and Sacha Bunge asked 51 people with experience in consensual non-monogamy what their partner’s other relationships did to them, and published among the drawbacks that a metamour can try to exercise a veto over your relationship. One participant describes the form you can’t point at: there are all sorts of ways to have a soft veto, by making it so unpleasant for your partner to be with that other person that the relationship disappears by itself. So a veto almost always touches someone who consented to nothing, and the soft variant works exactly as well as the hard one.
Where this fits on this site
A veto is about your agreements and not about what happens during an evening; for that there’s a safeword. If the question of whether you want something with a third person is in play, and how you discuss that at home, that’s the conversation I most often start with. What such an evening looks like is on the page about the BDSM date.
Sources
- veto. Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary. Supplies the origin in the Latin veto, literally “I forbid”, the first person singular present of vetare “forbid, prohibit, oppose, hinder”, the note that in ancient Rome it was the technical term for the protest of a tribune of the people against a measure of the Senate or the magistrates, the English constitutional use from the 1620s, and the broadening to any right to forbid something from 1792.
- Perceived Impacts of Partners’ Other Relationships on Oneself in Consensual Nonmonogamy. Jennifer Arter & Sacha S. Bunge, Archives of Sexual Behavior 53(4), 1415-1429, 2024 (DOI 10.1007/s10508-024-02823-7, PMID 38438814). Full text read. Supplies the setup with semi-structured conversations with 51 people who practice consensual non-monogamy, in which they were asked explicitly what they think of hierarchy and veto power, the finding that exercising veto power over someone else’s relationship is named as a drawback, and one participant’s description of “soft vetos”, in which contact with the other partner is made so unpleasant that the relationship ceases to exist.
Related terms
- Polyamory. The form where the word veto falls most often, and where the rank order between relationships is up for debate.
- Cuckolding. The second place a veto gets agreed, usually over who the third may be.
- Hard limit. The difference in direction: a hard limit is about what you don’t want to go through, a veto about what someone else may not do.
- Metamour. The one who pays the bill for a veto without having had a say in it.
- Negotiation. The conversation where a veto is agreed or turned down.
- Safeword. The word that breaks off a scene, and that a veto is often confused with.
- Monogamy. The agreement in which the veto silently always exists already.
Frequently asked questions
What people still ask about a veto.
What is a veto in a relationship?
A veto is a partner’s right to forbid a certain activity or a certain contact, regardless of what the other wants. A veto belongs to the agreements between partners and turns up mostly within polyamory, open relationships and cuckolding. The word is Latin for “I forbid”.
Who can you turn to with questions about a veto?
Victor, a gigolo with twenty-five years of experience in BDSM and a background as a psychotherapist. What you settle at home with your partner before you do anything with a third person is a conversation he has more often than the evening itself. You can ask freely through the contact form or chat for free.
Learn more
Still have questions about agreements with your partner?
I'm Victor. What you settle at home before you do anything with a third person comes up with me more often than the evening itself. You can ask without anything having to come of it; write me whenever you like, I'll message you back at your own pace.