James Argent displayed a heartfelt affection with his new girlfriend, Nicoline Artursson, as they were seen sharing a passionate kiss in St. Tropez. The former TOWIE star, 36, appeared deeply enamored with his former Miss Sweden companion during their seaside escape. Images obtained by The Sun captured James and Nicoline’s intimate moments in the water, where they were clearly unable to keep their hands off each other, followed by a romantic walk along the beach.

A source informed MailOnline that Nicoline is described as ‘lovely’ and noted that James ‘deserves all this happiness after enduring a lot.’ James treated his new partner to an opulent long weekend at Indie Beach in Plage de Pampelonne, as reported.

Nicoline, 31, was crowned Miss World Sweden in 2011 and has modeled for Abercrombie & Fitch. Although she was invited to participate in the French version of The Bachelorette, she chose to focus on her studies instead.

Speculation about James Argent and Nicoline Artursson’s romance began circulating after James liked a photo of Nicoline on her Instagram from the World Vision Gala last month.

In the post, Nicoline shared an image of herself in a navy satin one-shoulder wrap dress with a high leg slit. She captioned the photo: “It’s an absolute pleasure to be part of this year’s WORLD VISION GALA and to help bring everyone together for a greater cause! A huge thank you to everyone who attended for all the support and contributions! In 2011, I was crowned Miss Sweden, a title I have always cherished and honored for its profound purpose.”

This marks James’s first relationship since his breakup with Stella Turian last November. Earlier this year, James discussed his struggles with single life on the My Dirty Laundry podcast, revealing how difficult Valentine’s Day was for him due to his single status. He admitted to staying off social media to avoid feeling disheartened by seeing posts related to the holiday.

Having faced his personal challenges, including maintaining sobriety for two years and losing 15 stone, James expressed a positive outlook on his overall life but acknowledged that his love life could use improvement. He candidly shared, “I’m in a really good place. Everything in my life is perfect, apart from my love life. It would be nice if that would change.”

‘But, I couldn’t help it. There was times where I’d just have a little glance and all you would see was couples. Everyone’s madly in love. Everyone’s happy.

‘Everyone’s out on dates. There’s flowers, there’s balloons, there’s chocolates,there’s date nights or trips or happily married couples – and yeah, it did start to affect me a little bit.’

But James has said that rather than wallow in misery, he tried to go out to make himself feel better, but a trip to the shops didnt’ help the situation at all.

He said: ‘I thought, I’m gonna get out the house and a food shop and I went to my local supermarket and what made things a million times worse, every single aisle that I looked at was a Valentine’s Day dine-in meal for two…

‘It was starters, main, dessert and a drink for 20 quid. And I was like, ‘oh no’, it just absolutely, it just got to me.