Golden Bachelorette Joan Details Dating Guilt After Husband’s Death

Joan Vassos is planting the seeds for a new chapter as the first-ever Golden Bachelorette.

But that doesn’t mean the love she has for her late husband John Vassos—who died in 2021 from pancreatic cancer—has withered. Though, opening up her heart again wasn’t easy.

“I’ve never had a really good romantic connection with anybody after John’s passing, so when I started feeling connected to some of the men on the show, I all of a sudden started feeling guilty,” Joan explained in an exclusive interview with E! News, “like I wasn’t honoring his memory or that I had to let go of him in some way to allow somebody else into my heart.”

But when the show’s psychiatrists stole her for a sec to share advice, a new mindset popped open.

“They said, ‘You can have two balloons in your hand,'” the 61-year-old recalled. “He said, ‘John could be this balloon, and the person that you’re having a connection with could be this balloon. And you don’t have to let go of this one to hold on to this one.'”