- Joan Vassos is opening up about her untraditional Fantasy Suites episode of The Golden Bachelorette.
- She won’t be having sex with any of her remaining suitors, a.k.a. Chock Chapple, Guy Gansert, or Pascal Ibgui.
- She requested that there not be beds in the Fantasy Suites.
On the inaugural season of The Golden Bachelorette, Joan Vassos has whittled her way down to three remaining suitors—Chock Chapple, Guy Gansert, and Pascal Ibgui. But she’s not doing the iconic Fantasy Suites the usual way: The 61-year-old star has made it clear that she’s not having sex.
“I don’t judge anybody else for doing it. What’s good for them is fine. But it didn’t feel good to me,” she shared in an October episode of the Off the Vine podcast.
While she wasn’t going to have a “physical element” in the Fantasy Suites, Joan said she “certainly saw the need of having the off-camera time with people.” So she told producers, “’I don’t want any beds in the room.’ And I said to the men that we’re not doing the physical part of it. I’m sorry.”
Instead, the Fantasy Suite rooms had a couch, and Joan and the contestants left before they went to bed. Joan added that “It’s also maybe a little uncomfortable waking up with somebody in the morning that you haven’t had that much time with.”
“Sleeping in the bed with them. That all felt a little uncomfortable to me,” she continued. “I like the idea that if I chose somebody at the end, that he wouldn’t have to think of me having slept with the other guys.”
Joan was well-aware that this would be on TV, noting that she had her family to think about. The Maryland native, who is mom to four kids— Allison, Nicholas, Erica, and Luke—said that her children were “mortified” at the idea of their mom having a traditional Fantasy Suite date.
“They even think the name is disgusting. They’re like, ‘It’s just gross,’” Joan said. “They’re like, ‘Oh my God. That’s so gross to even think about that with you… Then we’ve all put some thoughts into viewers’ heads of what that looks like.”
Joan appeared on The Golden Bachelor—and subsequently, The Golden Bachelorette—after losing her husband, John, to pancreatic cancer in 2021. She went through therapy to get to a point where she felt comfortable dating again, she told Women’s Health.
“You have two balloons. In this hand you have John, and in this hand, you have someone else you’re interested in. You don’t have to let go of John to be able to hold this one,” Joan said her therapist her.
“That resonated so much with me, because that’s what I was feeling—like I was going to have to let John out of my heart to let somebody else in,” she continued. “And honestly, just that one little analogy got me through the rest of the season. I just needed to know that it was okay to still have him.”
Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a master’s degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.
