The operational definition
Strip the therapy-speak and emotional availability reduces to three observable capacities: you can say what you feel while you're feeling it ('that annoyed me,' 'I really enjoyed today'); you can hear someone else's feelings without immediately fixing, deflecting, or defending; and you let closeness develop without deploying distance the moment it does.
Nothing on that list requires talking about feelings constantly. Availability is a capacity, not a volume setting.
The habits that read as unavailable
Certain patterns get men labeled unavailable regardless of their intentions: answering 'how do you feel about this' with what they think about it; going quiet for days after a notably good date; keeping every conversation in the safe zone of logistics and banter; and treating any expression of need as pressure to be managed.
Most of these aren't character flaws — they're habits, often learned in environments where feelings were liabilities. Habits respond to practice.
Building the capacity
The practice is unglamorous. Naming feelings in low-stakes moments builds the vocabulary for high-stakes ones — 'that meeting frustrated me' at work is a rep. Listening without fixing is a discipline: when she describes a hard day, the first response is acknowledgment, and solutions wait for an invitation.
And when closeness triggers the urge to create distance — busyness, irony, a sudden flaw-audit of the other person — the move is to notice the urge and stay put for one beat longer than comfortable. Capacity, like every other kind of strength, is built slightly past the comfortable range.