Joan Vassos is looking back at her Golden Bachelor experience. After the 60-year-old private school administrator decided to leave the show to help her daughter, who recently gave birth, she took to her Instagram Story to speak out about her decision to walk away from the chance at a relationship with Gerry Turner.
“A huge thank you to everyone expressing their concern for my family,” Joan wrote. “It’s a privilege to be a mom to four amazing kids and a grandmother (they call me Jojo) to two beautiful grandchildren. But once a mom, always a mom and sometimes the timing doesn’t work out with finding love.”
“Everyone at home is doing great and I hope one day I will get the chance at love again,” she added.
Joan also expressed her love for her fellow contestants, writing, “I’m so lucky to have been surrounded by such sweet and supportive women.”
The situation played out on Thursday night’s episode of the show, when Joan won one-on-one time with Gerry thanks to her poem performance during the group talent show.
Joan and Gerry’s meal together couldn’t have gone better; she walked away with a rose and he left feeling like they’d just taken “the first step on a very strong connection.”
The next morning, though, Joan received a call from her daughter, who recently had a baby, that made her decide to head home.
“My daughter just had a baby. It wasn’t a normal, everyday delivery at all. Things go wrong. Even if everything went right, you need your mom,” she told the cameras. “My family will always be first. Once you become a mom, you’re always a mom, even when your kids are older. Nothing is more important.”
After breaking the news to the ladies, and admitting that her “heart is breaking” with the decision, Joan told Gerry about her impending departure.
“For the first time I was envisioning a life with somebody else, which is just amazing. It healed my heart, honestly,” she told him. “… As much as I don’t want to leave, and I don’t want to leave our journey, I’ve got to be a parent and I’ve got to come home to my kids.”
While Gerry understood, he was admittedly “disappointed,” telling Joan, “I was thrilled we had a conversation like we did, but there’s a moral compass that we both share. And sometimes the right thing to do is the hardest.”
Gerry cried amid Joan’s exit, and she was likewise emotional, telling the cameras, “My heart maybe got a little fix from Gerry. He’s helped with the journey, because as you get older you become more invisible. People don’t see you anymore. You’re not as significant as when you’re young.”
This is one of the first of several heartbreaking moments to come for Gerry, as he previously told ET that he gets into “an incredibly bad situation” by falling for two women over the course of his journey.
“When you’re down to the last two people over that amount of time and that much investment, you really have strong feelings for them even though you know they’re not the right person. They are so close to it,” he said. “You’re connected so deeply and then you realize they have to leave. It’s, oh my god, it was an incredibly bad situation.”
