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The Golden Bachelorette star Joan Vassos has explained why she removed beds from the franchise’s famed fantasy suites.
The 61-year-old, who currently stars in ABC’s hit The Golden Bachelor spin-off, defended her decision to take sex “off the table” as the first-ever Golden Bachelorette. “I’m not a person who can have a physical relationship with more than one person,” she told Us Weekly in an interview published October 16.
Instead, the widow wanted her overnight dates to focus on “emotional intimacy” rather than physical. “I wanted it to be agreed that we would talk and have the conversations we need to have off-camera. We didn’t spend the night together,” she said. “There was no bed in the room.”
Fortunately, Vassos revealed that the men on her season respected her decision. “You gotta think, the person you’re potentially ending up with probably does not want to think of you, last week, having slept with the guy he hangs out with,” she explained. “It’s just weird.”
As fans are well aware, fantasy suites are a staple of the Bachelor franchise – which includes The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise, and The Golden Bachelor. Each season, the lead Bachelor or Bachelorette spends an overnight date with each three final contestants. While Vassos marks the first Bachelorette to do away with the fantasy suite tradition, she maintained that she was “not judging” former leads for doing things differently.
“Everybody needs to do it their way. I’m not judging,” she said. “The physical part is important at every age, but I think it’s more important when people are younger. Each of us needs to engineer the journey so it works best for us.”
Throughout her season of The Golden Bachelorette, which debuted on September 18, Vassos has kept things relatively less steamy than previous seasons, having kissed only “five or six of the men.”
“I don’t love public displays of affection,” she added. “That’s great you’re doing it, but no one really wants to see it. I was very conscious of that.”
The mother of four warmed the hearts of viewers during last year’s season of The Golden Bachelor, where she developed a strong connection with star Gerry Turner. However, she ultimately chose to go home during week three of the show upon learning that her daughter was having a medical emergency.
Vassos’s first husband, John Vassos, died in 2021 at age 59 from pancreatic cancer. She is a mother to four adult children – Nick, 34, Erica, 33, Allison, 30, and Luke, 28 – and a grandmother to three.
The Golden Bachelorette airs Wednesdays at 8pm ET on ABC.
