Joan Vassos has admitted making connections with men on The Golden Bachelorette brought on feelings of guilt, like she was "cheating on" her late husband.
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Joan's husband of 32 years, John Vassos, died of pancreatic cancer in January 2021, and it sent Joan into emotional turmoil for years.
"My husband passed away during COVID and I really didn't embrace the whole mourning thing. I was in charge of being strong. I just buckled down and ignored it," Joan, a 61-year-old private school administrator, told People.
The mother and grandmother said she had tried to immerse herself into group therapy at the time, but those sessions were hard to find amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Joan therefore attempted to heal on her own, and she competed on Gerry Turner's The Golden Bachelor season last year.
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Joan decided to quit The Golden Bachelor during Week 3 to tend to her postpartum daughter at home, and ABC later selected her to star on The Golden Bachelorette, which premieres with a two-hour episode on Wednesday, September 18 at 8PM ET/PT on ABC.
As Joan began to form real connections with some of the 24 men vying for her affection while filming The Golden Bachelorette, she said she "had to face" her grief and stop viewing her love journey as a betrayal.
"It was in my face that I was feeling really guilty, honestly, about having feelings for somebody else. I almost felt like I was cheating on John, which is crazy because he's passed away," Joan confessed.
Before John died, however, he had apparently told his wife to "find somebody" because he didn't want her to be alone.
Although Joan had permission to move on and look for love again, she admitted that she felt "uneasy" navigating the early days of her The Golden Bachelorette journey.
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Thankfully, The Golden Bachelorette's team of psychiatrists rushed to Joan's aid during the process.
"They said, 'You don't have to let go of John. Picture it like this: you have two balloons, one in each hand, and John is in a balloon in this hand, and your potential person that you're going to fall in love with in this hand. You don't have to let go of him from this hand to pick this one up and have a life with this one,'" Joan recalled.
Joan thought that was "such a good lesson" because it helped her talk more openly about her late husband with her The Golden Bachelorette suitors.
"You're trying to establish a relationship with somebody else, you don't want to talk about your deceased spouse, but keeping his memory alive didn't seem like I was being weird," Joan reasoned.
"I felt comfortable finally doing it. I talked about how funny he was and stuff like that, and I feel like the guys really appreciated that."
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In order for Joan to be authentic, she felt the need to bring up her past and how her marriage affected her going into her next relationship.
Joan said her transparency also influenced some of her bachelors to open up about loss and heartbreak they've faced. Joan, after all, wasn't the only person on the show who had lost a spouse.
"It opened up the door to talk about people that were really important parts of your lives," Joan explained.
"You can't ignore it. It's going to be there. Talking about it and letting it out makes it more almost joyful."
Starring on The Golden Bachelorette apparently helped Joan immensely as she was still processing her husband's death and dealing with grief.
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"I went from not being able to think about him or even having a picture in my house that I could see every day -- I had pictures in the guest room and other parts of the house I don't see every day -- to the point where now I'm feeling so much better about it," Joan shared with the magazine.
Joan has learned to honor John's memory and pay tribute to him by sharing stories about him.
"Putting his name on a bench or planting a tree, none of these things are good enough," Joan acknowledged.
"So I said, 'You know what I think he would like the most? Is that you don't forget him.' Tell me stories. It doesn't hurt me anymore; it makes me happy."
Now that Joan has finished filming the show and is hopefully in love, or maybe even engaged, she revealed that The Golden Bachelorette "cured" her.
"This journey made me open to love. And I figured it out partway through the journey that I really wasn't there when I came, but I got there," Joan concluded.
Click here to read The Golden Bachelorette spoilers and find out whom Joan really connected with and ended up choosing as her winner.