I (29m) and my wife (27f) have been in an open relationship for many years. The exact bounderies of our open relaitonship have changed from time to time, but we have always both said we are not interested in polyamory. However, it has started to become clear that we had very different definitions of polyamory.
For me, polyamory simply means having multiple significant others, or otherwise having multiple romantic relationships. For her, it means having an emotional connection with multiple sexual partners.
For context, I have had a sexual parter for two years who I have develped a very strong friendship with. We have been texting on a regular basis from the start, and have gotten together on many occasions just to hang out. My wife even invited her to my birthday party last year. But my wife says she is getting uncomfortable with this becuase she thinks it is crossing the line into polyamory, which has been confusing to me becuase from my perspective nothing about her position in my life has changed except the fact that our freindship grew naturally over time.
I know that at the end of the day, I need to do whats best for my marriage first and formost. But I worry about what this means for our ability to have an open relationship at all. Declining to pursue a romantic relaitonship seems very cut and dry to me, but I don't know how to prevent a freindship from growing naturally over time.