• “Golden Bachelor” star Joan Vassos opted for no physical intimacy during Fantasy Suites week.
• Joan said she “felt uncomfortable having a physical relationship with more than one person.”
• She said her decision took the pressure off and gave her more time to talk off-camera with the men.

Before making her debut as the first Golden Bachelor, Joan Vassos decided on a non-negotiable week for Fantasy Suites: not to have sex with any of her suitors.

“I thought about it a lot before the season started, just because I felt uncomfortable being physical with multiple people,” Joan told Business Insider.

“The Golden Bachelorette,” which premiered in September, is ABC’s newest addition to its sprawling and popular “Bachelor” franchise, itself a movie spinoff. succeeded wildly the first season of “The Golden Bachelor,” which focused on a man and a handful of women in their golden years looking for love.

Bachelor Nation was introduced to Joan in the first season of “The Golden Bachelor“, with Gerry Turner, but left the series after three episodes to be with her daughter, who was dealing with postpartum depression back home

In her second attempt to find love, Joan forms deep bonds with three contestants: Chock, an insurance executive; Guy, an emergency physician; and Pascal, salon owner.

On Wednesday night’s episode, Joan and the men head to Tahiti for overnight dates. In a departure from the usual Fantasy Suites experience, the Bachelor reveals that he will not be physically intimate with any of the contestants. Instead, he wants to use the time to discuss intimate things outside the room.

Joan told Business Insider that she knows Fantasy Suites is a significant part of this stage of the process, but she wanted her experience to be different.

“I made the decision early on that I wasn’t going to do it,” she told BI of her choice not to be physically intimate with anyone. “I had to do it in the way that made me feel most comfortable.”

Joan said that by doing this she had more time to get to know the men better.

“And by taking it off the table, it kind of took the pressure off me, and maybe even the guys,” she said.

There’s another reason why he didn’t want to have sex with the contestants.

“I also thought that if I ended up with someone, I didn’t want that to be a part of the relationship that was a controversial part,” she said. “Because if the person it could end up with imagined that I had been physical with someone else so recently, I could imagine that would be a problem.”

Joan shares similar comments during the episode. “The person I end up with at the end of this journey has to be my highest priority because I’m going to spend the rest of my life with that person,” she says. “So if I hold off on everyone until I find that person, it’s the right thing to do.”

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