A couple months ago, I attended an intimate dinner at a friend's house and got seated next to Brad Pitt. (Yep, that Brad Pitt.) And while it was pretty surreal asking Tyler Durden to please pass me the pepper, what was even cooler was the reflection the evening provided me of my own growth.

Let me explain: Years ago, if I found myself seated next to a cool, alpha male like Pitt I would have—to put it colloquially—shit my pants. I would have felt so much pressure to get this older, famous dude to like me that I would've spent the entire meal frozen, afraid to say the wrong thing, make the wrong move, or even breathe the wrong air, lest I offend him. This is how I spent my childhood: When I was five, and my parents got divorced, my larger-than-life dad moved out and every time I got a chance to hang around him I felt like it was my big chance—if I made a good joke, or got the winning hit in the baseball game, maybe he'd come back and be my dad again like before.

My dad never moved back, and that immense pressure followed me into adulthood. When I moved to New York and began rising up in the ranks professionally, I met a lot of hip, handsome, and seemingly powerful older men who I desperately wanted to see and appreciate me. But instead of being my true self and asking them for the help and closeness I craved, I tried to impress them the way I thought men wanted to be impressed: with my smarts, my irreverence and dedication to the job. If I could work hard and be successful, just like them, they had to love me. Right? Well, not exactly. What happened was I tried so hard to be perfect that these guys never got to see the real me anyway—just an invulnerable imitation that inevitably ran out of tricks, and then ghosted them. It was an exhausting cycle.

As men, we need the attention, love and blessings of an older, wiser man to feel comfortable in our skin—and to complete the maturation process into manhood. If we're lucky, this comes through our dads, but many of us aren't so lucky. (Not to mention that around the Vietnam-era in America younger guys stopped relating to older men almost completely: “Don't trust anyone over 30!”)

As a result of this void between the generations, any older, earnest man who is kind to us becomes suspect. I see this a lot as a coach. Most of my clients I fall in love with during their first session—meaning of course that I see their inherent value in the world, and get excited about working with them. But the clients don't see themselves that way. They're programmed, like I was, to believe their value lies in achievement. They want to be “good” clients, and do well at being coached. They don't trust me, because they don't trust themselves.

Because of our fear of rejection by older men (and ultimately the rejection we experienced from our fathers), most of will project our longing for male bonding onto famous men: musicians, TV actors, tech millionaires and self help gurus—men who are safely far enough away that we could never experience real intimacy with them. But what we're missing out on is the gift of a non-sexual closeness with a real, flesh and blood man.

That's where a mentor comes in: For us to truly move beyond childhood fantasies of what a man is, we need the reflection that we're worthy and lovable without actually “doing” anything. That our ideas, beliefs, and even bodies, have value as they are. A healthy, older man who has done his own inner work can reflect back to us our inherent worth, which regulates our nervous system. It shows us we're more than the car we drive, the money we make, or the amount of Instagram followers we have. It reduces that ever-present voice in most guys' heads that says: “It's never enough, and I'm never enough.”