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In case you’ve been living under a rock or, you know, in a regular home and have just been busy living your life… Alex Nation has a new flame.
The reality TV star is believed to have broken up with Richie Strahan, who she met on the last season of The Bachelor, and has stepped whole heartedly into a new relationship with fellow Frankston Bombers footy player, Maegan Luxa.
On her 88.3 Southern FM radio show, the 26-year-old addressed her new relationship — albeit indirectly — while talking about the same-sex marriage plebiscite.
“We should celebrate love between people whether it is male, male and female or women and female,” she said.
“I think if you have a connection with someone you can’t — people can’t help who they connect with … that should be all that matters.”
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The mum-of-one said joining her AFL football team at the beginning of the year enlightened her to the possibility of a same-sex relationship.
“Before being in a football club I didn’t have any friends that were in relationships with women, I’d never experienced that,” she said.
“Obviously I had seen it down the street and everything like that but I’d never experienced it first hand with my own friends.”
Richie was reportedly devastated to learn of Alex’s new relationship.
She went on to explain that her eyes have been opened to the struggles that same-sex couples face.
“Since I have joined the football club, I now have many friends who are in same sex relationships and it opens your eyes to certain little struggles that they go through for women in a couple,” she said.
“At the same time you see the two of them together and they are exactly the same as you would be [in a heterosexual relationship].”
Alex also encouraged listeners to vote in favour of same-sex marriage — hear, hear!
Since the news broke, heartbroken Richie has had no choice but to leave the country — escaping to Bali on a solo surf trip to seek solace.
“Bali is Richie’s happy place, he can escape all the fanfare and go unnoticed as he wraps his head around everything that’s come to light in recent weeks,” a close friend recently revealed to Woman’s Day.
And while it’s been rumoured for months that Alex and Richie had split, the source said the decision to break up definitely wasn’t mutual, and Richie is devastated.
“He’s shattered it didn’t work out with Alex, and that she’s been able to move on so quickly.”
Friends of Alex and Maegan, a chef on the Mornington Peninsula, said Alex made the first move, despite previously being interested only in men.
“Alex was telling everyone that she had a crush on Maegan and then they shared a shoey (where you drink beer out of a shoe) and the rest was history.”
