Joan Vassos has teased if she fell in love with more than one man on her The Golden Bachelorette season.
“I fell in love quickly,” Joan confirmed to Jason Tartick on a recent episode of his “Trading Secrets” podcast.
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A preview of what’s to come on The Golden Bachelorette appears to show Joan telling The Bachelor 28 alum Kelsey Anderson’s father Mark Anderson, “I love you.”
When asked if she had fallen in love with more than one bachelor during filming, Joan replied, “I honestly fell in love with a lot of people!”
“To be truly honest with you,” she continued, “I formed connections with most of these men. There is a thing about older men when they’re vulnerable and you just want to take care of them!”
Joan said she formed “amazing friendships” with her The Golden Bachelorette cast of senior guys.
“I feel like I left [the men] knowing them so deeply,” Joan shared.
“So I fell in love with probably 24 men, to be honest. They were just such great men, and it was such a privilege to be with them and to have them share their lives with me. And I shared mine back!”
Joan laughed about how she truly went through “stuff with these guys.”
The 61-year-old private school administrator and mother elaborated, “It’s crazy being on this show. You reveal a lot of stuff to total strangers really soon, but you form these really strong bonds because you do that.”
Joan therefore reiterated that she “fell in love a lot” during her journey, and she added of her season’s ending: “I left the show exactly where I think I need to be.”
Joan concluded that “life has a way of unfolding the way it’s supposed to” and she believes that her journey on The Golden Bachelorette “really did.”
Joan has made cryptic comments about her The Golden Bachelorette ending in recent weeks, and she’s reluctant to share specifics about whether she found the man of her dreams.
Joan previously shared with Us Weekly that she found “all different kinds of love” on The Golden Bachelorette.
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And when asked to spill more details about how her journey concluded on The View, Joan said, “I feel like everybody’s journey is completely different, including mine.”
Joan added, “Mine ended in a unique way, but the way it ended makes me very happy.”
But Joan couldn’t get away with that response when talking to several curious women.
When The View’s co-hosts pushed Joan to reveal if she found love on the show, Joan quipped, “I am smiling!”
Joan’s The Golden Bachelorette season premiered on September 18 with 24 bachelors competing for her heart, but she is quickly narrowing down her pool of men.
In a preview of a future The Golden Bachelorette episode, Joan appears to tell the cameras, “I’ve only been in love with one person — more than one now.”
When Us had asked Joan earlier this month if she could confidently say that she found love on her season, Joan admitted it was a “hard question” to answer.
“The journey ended exactly like it should,” she told the magazine at the time.
“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. So I think I found a lot of love actually this season.”
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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.
“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.
After losing her late husband John Vassos to cancer in 2021 after 32 years of marriage, Joan shared that she hoped to find a partner with whom she can spend the rest of her life.
But Joan 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.”
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 immense grief and feelings of guilt about dating again.
“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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Click here to read spoilers about Joan’s The Golden Bachelorette season and who finished as her Final 4 bachelors, Final 3 men, runner-up and winner.
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About The Author:
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.