Hi community!

This is my first time posting, but I have benefited greatly from all of your insight on various topics. I am experiencing some challenges in my wife's (mid 20's F) and I's (early 30's M) ENM relationship.

We co-created a living document that serves as a set of rules (we refer to them as intentions) of how we operate non-monogamously. I made a mistake recently in adhering to one of these intentions last week, and my wife is experiencing a lot of emotional turmoil as a result. We have suspended dating indefinitely as we resolve this issue.

The intention at hand is that we are to inform each other within 48 hours of any form of escalation with other people we are playing and/or dating. For example, a first kiss, fooling around, sex, "I love you's." This sort of thing. Recently, I had met up with someone and we fooled around for the first time. I called my wife on my way home from the experience and we chatted about what a wonderful time and experience I had. I completely neglected to directly mention that we had fooled around.

Last night, this came up in a conversation about something else, and my wife felt completely blindsided by the news. She is deeply hurt that I did not adhere to our agreements and feels cheated on as a result. This is hard because there are many layers to our intentions document, and while I have adhered to many aspects of it as we have navigated ENM over the past 5 years this is a recent iteration of our go at this since March.

My questions to you all are:

1. Are there any of you out there who operate similarly with wanting clear communication about these types of escalations? If so, what advice can you give me on how to do this better? Perhaps shed some light on any challenges you've experienced with this.
2. For those of you that do not operate with this sort of rule/intention, can you share why you have steered away from it and how develop a sense of sexual and emotional safety without that direct communication?

Thanks everyone!