Medium fit

Emotional Availability measures whether someone can be reached and can show up without shutting down, and Ivan Lowe's pre-therapy baseline scored low on both counts. He was physically present in his marriage but emotionally walled off — dismissing Rebecca's concerns, insisting he had things under control, and framing help-seeking as culturally unacceptable. His availability dial began to shift only when Rebecca stopped treating it as optional and when Ivan discovered, unexpectedly in therapy, that talking about his experiences didn't drain him — it helped. The shift was incremental: from closed and defended to gradually reachable, first by his therapist, then more broadly.