Whoever gets Bachelor runner-up Nikki is the real winner, writes Angela Mollard.

THERE are three ways a man can choose love: via his head, via his heart or via his dick.

Last night on The Bachelor Richie Strahan chose to go with the third option.

As he broke the heart of the nation’s favourite Nikki Gogan — and that of every other girl-next-door — it was clear that this was a c**k-up.

As he told Kyle and Jackie O this morning, the strain of having to wait to bed winner Alex Nation had given him “the biggest blue balls in Australia.”

I’m sure his mum was thrilled to hear that.

Now no one is suggesting that Alex is not a thoroughly lovely young woman — and clearly gifted at getting melted chocolate out of orifices — but she was the vixen to Nikki’s sweetheart.

She kissed deeply, gazed lingeringly, stroked suggestively. She used the Princess Diana ruse of gazing out from under her fringe and regularly wore chokers — really just sex toys — around her neck. While Nikki was sitting on hay bales professing love and being tinkly and showing integrity, Alex was performing a masterclass in foreplay.

Nikki begins to realise this isn’t going to end well.Source:Channel 10

Happy couple, not so happy viewers.Source:AAP

Rope technician Richie revealed Alex as the girl who has stolen his heart.Source:AAP

Kudos to her — she judged it well. Because this is a guy whose job is fly in, fly out. He’s devoted to his mum and sister. He’s doubtless dated a few nice local girls — blondes, obviously. He’s done beach walks and picnics and family barbecues. In short, he’s done coleslaw and Nikki was offering him more coleslaw.

Alex was offering oysters and champagne. Naked.

But if you say you’re going on The Bachelor to find love and settle down then you really have to have got “phwoar” out of your system beforehand. Richie has clearly spent too long away on those mining sites. Or he’s done it the wrong way round — spent his 20s focused on love when that’s the decade you do lust. To let that steer your choices at 31 is, well, a bit stunted. Specially when you’ve got a meddling mum and your paramour has a child.

So, two theories.

The first: Richie isn’t mature enough to realise that lust is fuelled by limerence, basically infatuation, and that it starts to droop just like those red roses he gave so readily.

Time will do it but so will a 3417km commute to see your beloved, a mum who doesn’t really like her and a five-year-old who gets up at 5.30am and bounces on your bed wanting pancakes. Lust likes villas in Bali, and a girl in a bikini and beds strewn with frangipani flowers. What it doesn’t like is tension or delayed flights or a kid having a temper tantrum because his mum is having fun without him.

Mumma Richie was not a fan, either.Source:Channel 10

The second theory (popular with men) is that Richie knows exactly what he’s doing. He understands that finding love on a reality TV show surrounded by cameras 24/7 is a crock.

He’s smart enough to know that you can’t pash your way through a dozen chicks and not think it’s going to come back and bite you on the bum.

He’s worked out that it’s not an environment to find love via head or heart so he’s doing what any red-blooded man would do in the situation: he’s getting his rocks off and he’s chosen the girl who’ll do it for him.

Fair play but I suspect he’ll regret it. Because Nikki was the girl for him.

As I’ve said before, she was the girl with integrity; a bitch disposal expert who showed that being a kind girl is being a cool girl.

Whoever gets Nikki is the real winner.

Continue the conversation with Angela Mollard on Twitter.