“Goldilocks” Joan Vassos says Gerry Turner gave her some advice

The widow and mother-of-four previously won Bachelor Nation — and Gerry — on “The Golden Bachelor.” But after having her first and only one-on-one date in week three, she left the show to be with her daughter, who was dealing with postpartum depression back home

When she returned to the show for the Women Tell All special, Joan said she “felt bad” about breaking up with Gerry. She also credited him with helping her not feel invisible at her age.

“Gerry helped me feel visible because he looked at me and cared about what I was saying and wanted to know me,” she said.

And as it turned out, Gerry would prove to be a useful confidant on her way into the “Goldilocks”.

Joan got relationship advice from Gerry before filming ‘The Golden Bachelorette’

When it came time to prepare for her season of “The Golden Bachelorette,” Joan said she talked to about four people, including Gerry.

“Probably the best advice I got from Gerry,” Joan told Business Insider ahead of the series premiere Wednesday night. “He did it most recently and had a more similar age-wise journey to mine.”

“He said, don’t invest in somebody too soon,” she recalled. “There are a lot of people out there and everyone deserves an equal chance. You don’t know what will happen to your original feelings for someone.”

Gerry also advised Joan to “let the story unfold with each person, meet them as if they were the only person there.”

Given the fast-paced format of the show, Gerry also told Joan, “Don’t waste your time.”

“It’s a very, very fast journey, and make sure that every conversation is important and that you learn something about the person, because you’re going to need all that knowledge to make decisions in the end,” Joan told him.

Joan turned to the show’s psychiatrist to navigate her feelings of guilt as she tried dating again.

Although Joan felt ready to find love again after her husband John’s death in 2021, she didn’t realize she had unresolved grief for her late husband until she appeared on “The Golden Bachelorette.”

“Emotionally, I feel like I’ve learned a lot of things that I didn’t know that I didn’t have to deal with when my husband was gone,” Joan said.

Joan said she dated briefly after John’s death, but had no significant relationships until meeting Gerry on “The Golden Bachelor.” To her surprise, she ended up hooking up with even more contestants on “The Golden Bachelorette.”

“As I was going through this journey and having some connections and starting to imagine a life with someone, all of a sudden I felt really guilty and I felt like I couldn’t let go of my memory of John,” she said. Joan said, adding that he would always be a part of her.

She said she expressed this to the contestants on the first night and turned to the “Bachelor” psychiatrist for advice on how to overcome her guilt.

“I was given a great analogy. They said, ‘You have two balloons in your hands: this is John in this balloon and this is this other person in this balloon, and you don’t have to let go of John to have this person,'” she said. “So I could still have John in my heart, in my memory and in my mind, and there’s still room for someone else.”

Joan described her season as emotional, both for her and her men.

“There wasn’t one man who left this season who said they didn’t learn something about themselves and come out a different person,” she said.

New episodes of “Goldilocks” premiere Wednesdays on ABC and stream the next day on Hulu.