- After exiting Gerry Turner’s season of The Golden Bachelor in Week 3 to be along with her postpartum daughter, Joan Vassos makes her debut because the Golden Bachelorette on Wednesday, Sept. 18
- Twenty-four males ages 57 and over will compete for Vassos’s coronary heart on the inaugural Golden Bachelorette season
- Vassos tells PEOPLE she wished to finish her season with “someone I noticed a future with,” however “did not want to go away engaged”
Golden Bachelorette Joan Vassos did not want a hoop on the finish of her season, so long as she left with somebody with whom she may see a future.
“I stated all alongside I did not want to go away engaged,” Vassos, 61, tells PEOPLE on this week’s problem. “My objective was to go away in a dedicated relationship. I wished to have someone I noticed a future with and that we wished to see the way it works in the true world outdoors of the Bachelor bubble. I did not wish to undergo all of this and be on the similar place I used to be after I got here to the mansion.”
The personal faculty administrator — who departed early from Gerry Turner’s season of The Golden Bachelor to be along with her daughter after she gave delivery — additionally went into her journey realizing she wouldn’t relocate from her residence in Maryland for a brand new relationship.
“I might by no means wish to depart my household,” Vassos says. “My youngsters and my grandkids all stay actually near me and never being near them on a regular basis wouldn’t work for me. They’re a very powerful individuals in my life. I felt that anyone that I might be a superb match for, they might have the identical household values as I’ve and wouldn’t wish to depart their household.”
Vassos realized that she and a possible associate from the present would “have to determine a distinct solution to make it work” in the event that they didn’t stay in the identical space.
“My thought was that, relying in your working standing, you might go and spend two weeks at their home and two weeks at your own home, or have one other location the place you’d all collect and perhaps one another’s households would come,” Vassos explains. “You work it out for some time till you determine a everlasting association, and that might be, feasibly, years.”
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One in every of Vassos’s suitors, Pablo, hails from Maryland, which she didn’t count on. “Going into this journey, I assumed that I used to be not going to have anyone from Maryland or not many individuals that have been geographically actually fascinating,” she says. “However within the instant current, I am not leaving my youngsters. I do not count on anyone to go away their households. You work it out. You place the burden on your self, not in your households.”
Although Vassos acknowledged distance is likely to be a think about a relationship with somebody she met on The Golden Bachelorette, she thought happening the present could be extra profitable in serving to her discover a associate than courting apps have been.
“Up till that time, I actually was not having a enjoyable time courting,” Vassos admits. “I attempted a courting app. I used to be all the time hoping a good friend would set me up with someone, and none of these issues actually appeared to work. I wished up to now, nevertheless it appeared like such an effort. I did not actually know learn how to do it.”
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After leaving 73-year-old Turner’s season, Vassos says she “did not dive actually again into the entire courting factor” as she continued to deal with supporting her household.
“I posted a video to start with of the yr and I stated my New Yr’s resolutions, and one in all them was to get again on the market and begin courting,” she recollects. “After which I acquired a name quickly after that saying that they have been contemplating me as a possible Golden Bachelorette and was I ? So then I positively did not date.”
Whereas Vassos can’t say how her season ends, she teases that “the ultimate outcome was precisely what it was purported to be.”
“The journey was great for me, and I ended up being precisely the place I believe I must be,” she says. “I realized a lot about myself. The journey was very revealing and it was joyful, it was exhausting. I am unable to think about my life now with out having gone via this. I’m such a happier particular person on the finish of this journey than I used to be earlier than I went on it.”
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The Golden Bachelorette premieres Wednesday, Sept. 18 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.