‘The Golden Bachelorette’ star Joan Vassos explains why she took sex off the table for Fantasy Suites week

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

“I kind of 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 needed to do this the way that made me feel most comfortable.”

Joan said that by doing so, 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 of me, and maybe even the guys,” she said.

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

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

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

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