Eat, Pray, Love Author Is Now in a Same-Sex Relationship

Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, who split from her husband of nine years in July, says she's in love with her best friend, a woman named Rayya Elias, who was recently diagnosed with incurable pancreatic and liver cancer, the AP reports. Gilbert says in a lengthy Facebook post Wednesday the terminal diagnosis uncovered her true feelings for her longtime friend, and those feelings led to Gilbert's divorce from Jose Nunes, whom she described falling for at the end of her best-selling memoir. The posting was confirmed by Gilbert's publicist at Riverhead Books, Jynne Martin. Gilbert says she is making her relationship with Elias public because such "truth and transparency" make her life easier and more ethical.

"Death—or the prospect of death—has a way of clearing away everything that is not real, and in that space of stark and utter realness, I was faced with this truth: I do not merely love Rayya; I am in love with Rayya. And I have no more time for denying that truth," Gilbert writes. "The thought of someday sitting in a hospital room with her, holding her hand, and watching her slide away, without ever having let her (or myself!) know the extent of my true feelings for her...well, that thought was unthinkable." She says she and Elias are in a relationship now and asks readers for their love. (More Elizabeth Gilbert stories.)