Golden Bachelorette Joan Eliminates 3 Men Before Hometowns, Telling One She ‘Didn’t See Me in Our Conversations’

Before deciding which guys she would takes to hometowns, Golden Bachelorette Joan Vassos sent three men home solo.

Joan, 61, began the Oct. 16 episode of The Golden Bachelorette by chatting with former Bachelorette Trista Sutter about how to prep for hometowns.

“I need to open up more, but it’s hard when you have more than one person that you have feelings about,” Joan said. “It feels very weird to me, and surprising. I didn’t think that would happen.”

The private school administrator also told Trista, 51, that she worried “my heart is always going to belong” to her late husband John.

“He’s going to be happy for you if you’re happy,” Trista assured.

FIRST ONE-ON-ONE

Joan hopped in a helicopter with Keith and headed to a vineyard for a wine tasting for their one-on-one date. After sipping on some rosé, the 62-year-old opened up to Joan about his ex-wife’s struggle with addiction.

“We tried everything, the rehabs,” Keith said. “The only medication for addiction is your own internal self. I just had to separate my daughters from that and that hurt, you know, at that time. We haven’t talked to her in 10, 12 years.”

Joan appreciated Keith being so open with her. “I know being vulnerable is really scary,” she said to him.

In an on-camera interview, Joan said she and Keith “have a good, easy rapport.” She continued, “It’s not just laughing and fun and games, and that has changed a lot for me now.”

Keith said that if Joan brought him to hometowns, it would be a “backyard barbecue.”

“This was a good day, thank you very much,” Joan said to Keith as they sipped champagne and snacked on a charcuterie board.

Joan decided she didn’t want to give out any roses ahead of the rose ceremony this week, so Keith left the date without a rose.

GROUP DATE

Guy, Jordan, Jonathan, Pascal and Chock went on the final group date of the season. Joan took the men to a bowling alley, which she said “would be the type of place that my family would come.”

Joan hit a strike on her first try. “This woman’s got game,” Guy, 66, said.

Jonathan, 61, sensed “competition in the air” as Chock, 60, cuddled up with Joan.

“I’m crazy about her and I want to be with her every moment and I don’t care what they’re thinking, they’re doing. That’s their business,” Chock told the cameras. “I’m just worried about Joan and myself.”

Jonathan showed Joan photos of himself as a kid, including when he started wearing his hair in an afro. He also shared pictures of his children with Joan. “They’re my little prides and joy,” the shipping consultant said to her.

Joan told Jonathan, “I think you’re an incredible human being, honestly.”

The mother of four spent more time with Chock, telling him how she looked forward “to being in a couple again.” The insurance executive agreed that they both deserved a second chance at love.

“For a while I didn’t think so,” Joan said to Chock. “I thought like it was being selfish, like you don’t get to do this twice in your life. And that at this age, you should be like, in a support role to your family and trying to start a second life isn’t like, what we’re allowed to be doing or what we should be doing.”

Chock said he saw a “beautiful future” for himself and Joan, and so did she. “I absolutely see a future with you and I think it’s been obvious for a while,” Joan said.

SECOND ONE-ON-ONE

Mark landed the last one-on-one after telling the other guys he received a sign from his late wife Denise in the form of a hummingbird. “It’s like she’s there and she’s saying, ‘This is right,’” Mark, 57, said to the men.

Before the date, Mark told the cameras, “I have not felt this good for the last six and a half years. And I feel like I’ve never been more prepared in my life. I’m ready to go deep.”

Joan felt that, while Mark “checks so many of the boxes” for her, she didn’t feel like she’d “gotten there yet” with the army veteran.

“He’s just quiet,” Joan told the cameras. “He’s very soft spoken. We’re kind of formal, almost, with each other.”

For their date, Joan and Mark set sail on a yacht and sipped champagne before heading out on a scavenger hunt that host Jesse Palmer prepared for them. The scavenger hunt began with Joan and Mark fishing a message in a bottle out of the ocean. The message instructed the pair to play a game of Never Have I Ever.

Joan said she’d never seen the northern lights, while Mark made it clear he took a backseat during daughter Kelsey Anderson’s infant days by saying, “Never have I ever woken at night to feed a baby.”

Joan and Mark proceeded to talk about where they saw their lives going, and Mark shared details about his final days with his wife. “We really got to enjoy life,” he said. “We really got to see how many things we could possibly do and ran out of time. It was, you know, it’s not easy.”

Mark told Joan about the first time Denise came to him as a hummingbird during a ride through the Mexican countryside.

While Mark called the date “the best day I’ve had single arriving in California,” Joan felt, “There still seems to be something missing.”

The next day, Joan went to see Mark at the mansion. “I felt like we bonded in such an important way with that you made me so comfortable, and I felt so supported,” Joan said to Mark. “You’re such an amazing man. And all these things made me want us to be really good. But I went home last night and I kept thinking, I just don’t know like what is missing. Something doesn’t feel right. I couldn’t sleep the whole night.”

When Joan woke up in the morning, she felt like she had clarity.

“I feel like you’ve grown so much personally and that your heart is mending, but I didn’t see me in our conversations when we were talking, and I didn’t feel like I imagined an us,” she continued. “Like, I just came into this a little too early for you and I didn’t want to go into a rose ceremony with you when there are hometowns at stake and not have a conversation with you first. I need somebody who is as far along in their journey as I am.”

Mark took the breakup well. “My experience here has changed me,” he said, adding that, “I’m leaving here, I know, a better human being.”

Joan apologized to Mark before he left. “Talking to Mark was the hardest thing I’ve done,” she said in an on-camera interview. “We really had a connection. It was intimate, it was real. It just didn’t feel like we were in the same place yet. It just breaks my heart.”

ROSE CEREMONY

Joan began the rose ceremony by telling the men that she sent Mark home. Then she gave roses to Pascal, Chock, Guy and Jordan, meaning Keith and Jonathan would be leaving, too.

“It breaks my heart,” Joan told the cameras. “I hate to do this.”

Joan walked Jonathan out and told him, “I will always remember how you came with such an open heart and so vulnerable and you helped me be that way, too.”

Jonathan felt that Joan made an impact on him as well. “You validated a lot of the values that I try to be as a man and as a father,” Jonathan replied. “You see that in me and I can’t ask for anything more than that.”