The Golden Bachelorette star Joan Vassos has revealed that she approached Fantasy Suites in a completely different way than the franchise's leading men and women before her.
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"That's just not something I would do," added the 61-year-old private school administrator from Maryland.
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELOR' FRANCHISE COUPLES NOW: WHO IS STILL TOGETHER?? (PHOTOS)
Joan therefore decided to switch up the usual The Bachelor and The Bachelorette process for the overnight dates.
"I said right away that I wanted to do Fantasy Suites because there is a lot of value in being able to talk to somebody without cameras," Joan recalled.
"So I said, 'I want to do Fantasy Suites, but I don't want to have a bed in there. I'm taking that off the table.'"
Joan, who had been married for 32 years before her late husband John Vassos passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2021, clarified how her Fantasy Suite dates were "about emotional intimacy" and not about having "a physical relationship" with anybody.
"So I took it off the table right away," Joan reiterated.
"The men were all actually very respectful about that -- and kind of liked the idea."
Joan's bachelors probably didn't like the idea of her potentially sleeping with more than one man either!
"They thought it was a good idea," The Golden Bachelorette star confirmed.
Joan, however, pointed out how she's "not judging anybody else" for how they had gone about Fantasy Suites on previous The Bachelor or The Bachelorette seasons.
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELORETTE' COUPLES NOWThe Golden Bachelor star Gerry Turner, for example, did have beds in the room for his Fantasy Suite dates with runner-up Leslie Fhima and winner Theresa Nist.
"For me, that was the right way to do it," Joan concluded.
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELORETTE' COUPLES NOW: WHOM DID 'THE BACHELORETTE' STARS AND THEIR BACHELOR PICKS ULTIMATELY END UP WITH?! (PHOTOS)
Joan also had to overcome feelings of guilt about her late husband in order to fully enjoy and embrace her The Golden Bachelorette journey.
"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 recently 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's The Golden Bachelor season last year.
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 premiered September 18 on ABC.
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"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.
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.
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Starring on The Golden Bachelorette apparently helped Joan immensely as she was still processing her husband's death and dealing with grief.
"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.
"I said, 'You know what I think he would like the most? Is that you don't forget him,'" she noted. "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.
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELOR' FRANCHISE COUPLES NOW: WHO IS STILL TOGETHER?? (PHOTOS)
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
