The Golden Bachelorette star Joan Vassos has given a cryptic teaser about how her season is going to end.
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Joan's The Golden Bachelorette season just premiered on Wednesday, September 18, and Joan was shown giving her First Impression Rose, as well as a little kiss, to Keith Gordon.
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Joan said she felt very "hopeful" about finding love after getting to know her cast a little on Night 1, and the two-hour episode ended with the blonde beauty narrowing down her 24 senior bachelors to only 18 men.
In a preview of what's to come on The Golden Bachelorette, Jenn appears to say, "I love you," to Mark Anderson, and she tells the cameras, "I've only been in love with one person -- more than one now."
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When asked if she can confidently say that she found love on her season, Joan admitted to Us Weekly that's a "hard question" to answer.
"The journey ended exactly like it should. I feel like I found a lot of love and there's all different kinds of love," Joan explained to the magazine.
"I feel like every one of these men are going to be in my life forever. We shared really, really intimate things about our lives and we are bonded."
The 61-year-old private school administrator and mother therefore added, "So I think I found a lot of love actually this season."
Joan said she simply wanted to meet a man whom she could see "a future" with in "the real world" outside of The Bachelor bubble.
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"I didn't want to go through all of this and be at the same place I was when I came to the mansion," Joan explained.
Joan, who lost her husband John Vassos to cancer in 2021 after 32 years of marriage, said she's excited for her journey to play out on TV.
"I taped the whole season and had a little break, but there's been a lot of hype now, so I am happy it's finally here," Joan said.
"I am dying for this to not just be about me [and] for it to be about the journey and the men too."
Joan said her goal was to show viewers that whether you're 50, 60, 70 or 80, dating is still worth a try.
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"Dating can be fun," she reiterated. "Dating can be fun, and finding love is worth the journey.”
Joan shared that while she hoped to find a partner with whom she can spend the rest of her life, she wasn't necessarily banking on an engagement and returning home to her family in Maryland with a diamond engagement ring on her finger.
"I said all along I didn't need to leave engaged," Joan recently told People, noting, however, that she really wanted to leave the show "in a committed relationship."
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Joan admitted to People that she felt "uneasy" navigating the early days of her The Golden Bachelorette journey because she felt guilty for dating after the death of her husband.
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At points, Joan said she even felt like she was cheating on John.
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."
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.
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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."
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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.
"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.
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