Growing up, I was chronically in abusive and neglectful situations. By high school, I was being raised by teachers and friends to avoid foster care basically so I have never had a consistent parent in my life and because of that often see teachers are safe people and often attach to male teachers but never really have gotten attached to anyone enough to trust them.

I am in college and am in a small cohort of students. Our advisor (middle-aged guy) is very kind to every student but has taken a liking to me (appropriate liking, he is not like that at all he just really encourages me and has put extra effort in to help me many times because I am a problem lol). He has said he sees his students as his own kids and when he has been in the position of giving me advice. He knows a lot about me because I have discussed some of the things that have happened to help him understand why I can't do the same things as other students or why I am struggling with something.

He has taught me confidence, boundaries (always asking me if it's ok to ask certain questions and making sure I know I can say no), and is not afraid of being emotional and real. He has shown me more about being a man than my father ever did. I really want to tell him thank you for showing me what a real man is and tell him that if I can be half the man he is I would be doing good but without being weird or ruining our relationship (we are kind of friends especially now that I am about to graduate). I also am really worried about how to deal with graduating and I don't want to regret not saying thank you to him but also don't want to regret the vice versa.

Any advice is appreciated. Also yes I have a therapist.

TL;DR: I am a dude with a lot of daddy issues and I respect this professor as an academic and mentor but his kindness and realness showed me what a real man was. Would it be weird to mention that in my graduation thank you letter since he does know I have issues?