Joan Vassos ‘Felt Like’ She ‘Was Cheating on’ Late Husband by Falling for a Golden Bachelorette Suitor (Exclusive)

• Joan Vassos went on Gerry Turner’s season of The Golden Bachelor following the death of her husband of 32 years, John, but left early in the season to be with her postpartum daughter
• The mom of four tells PEOPLE she “didn’t embrace the whole mourning thing” after her husband died in January 2021 and “was feeling really guilty” when she started connecting with her Golden Bachelorette suitors
• The first season of The Golden Bachelorette premieres Wednesday, Sept. 18, at 8 p.m. on ABC

The Golden Bachelorette served, in part, as grief therapy for lead Joan Vassos, whose husband of 32 years, John, died in January 2021 from pancreatic cancer.

“My husband passed away during COVID and I really didn’t embrace the whole mourning thing,” Vassos, 61, tells PEOPLE. “I was in charge of being strong. I just buckled down and ignored it.”

The mom of four looked into attending group therapy at the time, but she couldn’t find one due to the pandemic. However, when she started forming connections on The Golden Bachelorette, “I had to face it,” Vassos says of her grief. “It was in my face that I was feeling really guilty, honestly, about having feelings for somebody else. I almost felt like I was cheating on John, which is crazy because he’s passed away.”

Vassos says that before he died, John told her: “I want you to find somebody. You are the greatest wife in the world. I don’t want you to be alone. I want you to find somebody.”

Still, Vassos — who appeared on Gerry Turner’s season of The Golden Bachelor and exited during Week 3 — admits she felt “uneasy” about moving on more than three years later. However, working with The Golden Bachelorette’s team of psychiatrists helped.

“They said, ‘You don’t have to let go of John. Picture it like this: you have two balloons, one in each hand, and John is in a balloon in this hand, and your potential person that you’re going to fall in love with in this hand. You don’t have to let go of him from this hand to pick this one up and have a life with this one,’” Vassos recalls. “And it was such a good lesson.”

After that, Vassos found she could talk openly about her husband with her suitors.

“You’re trying to establish a relationship with somebody else, you don’t want to talk about your deceased spouse, but keeping his memory alive didn’t seem like I was being weird,” she says. “I felt comfortable finally doing it. I talked about how funny he was and stuff like that, and I feel like the guys really appreciated that.”

Vassos says her talking about John gave the men on her season who’d experienced similar loss permission to bring up their late spouses, too. “It opened up the door to talk about people that were really important parts of your lives,” the private school administrator says. “You can’t ignore it. It’s going to be there. Talking about it and letting it out makes it more almost joyful.”

This marked a big step forward in Vassos’s grief journey.

“I went from not being able to think about him or even having a picture in my house that I could see every day — I had pictures in the guest room and other parts of the house I don’t see every day — to the point where now I’m feeling so much better about it,” Vassos says.

Now, the reality star likes to pay homage to her late husband by telling stories about him.

“Putting his name on a bench or planting a tree, none of these things are good enough,” she says. “So I said, you know what I think he would like the most? Is that you don’t forget him. Tell me stories. It doesn’t hurt me anymore; it makes me happy.”

Ultimately, being The Golden Bachelorette, “cured me,” Vassos says. “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.”

The Golden Bachelorette premieres Wednesday, Sept. 18, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.