In July, Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert announced that she had split from her husband of nine years, Jose Nunes, whom she called “Felipe” in the book to tell the story of how she met him on her publisher-subsidized journey. Now we know why Gilbert left Nunes because she just posted a gushing Facebook entry describing how she fell in love with her best friend of 15 years, a woman named Rayya, when she was helping Rayya during her cancer treatments. Gilbert describes their love as “the truth” and like it was inevitable:

This spring, I received news that would change my life forever. My best friend Rayya Elias was diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer — a disease for which there is no cure.

In the moment I first learned of Rayya’s diagnosis, a trap door opened at the bottom of my heart (a trap door I didn’t even know was there) and my entire existence fell straight through that door. From that moment forward, everything became about HER. I cancelled everything in my life that could be cancelled, and I went straight to her side, where I have been ever since.

Many of you already know who Rayya Elias is to me. She’s my best friend, yes, but it’s always been bigger than that. She’s my role model, my traveling companion, my most reliable source of light, my fortitude, my most trusted confidante. In short, she is my PERSON. I have spoken about her so many times on this page, and many of you have heard me speak about her in my speeches, too (such as my “Hummingbird” speech, where I sang her praises with all the love I could muster.) Some of you have even come to see the two of us speaking together on stage, over the years. Anyone who has ever seen us together knows that I am devoted to Rayya. I’ve never made a secret of it. As Ann Patchett said once of our friendship: “Your love for Rayya has always been writ large.”

But something happened to my heart and mind in the days and weeks following Rayya’s diagnosis. 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. 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.
Here is the thing about truth: Once you see it, you cannot un-see it. So that truth, once it came to my heart’s attention, could not be ignored.

But what to do with this potentially life-shattering truth?

Now let me tell you something I’ve learned from Rayya, over the fifteen years of our friendship. She is the most brave and honest person I know, and she has taught me more about courage and honesty than anyone I have ever met. Here is her mantra on truth, which I’ve heard her express so many times over the years, in so many difficult situations:
“The truth has legs; it always stands. When everything else in the room has blown up or dissolved away, the only thing left standing will always be the truth. Since that’s where you’re gonna end up anyway, you might as well just start there.”

So I did what Rayya has taught me to do: I just started there. I spoke my truth aloud.

For those of you who are doing the math here, and who are wondering if this situation is why my marriage came to an end this spring, the simple answer is yes. (Please understand that I cannot say anything more about it than that. I trust you are all sensitive enough to understand how difficult this has been. As David Foster Wallace once wrote: “The truth will set you free — but not until it’s had its way with you.” Yes, it has been hard. Yes, the truth has had its way with us. And yes, the truth still stands.)

So. Here is where we stand now: Rayya and I are together. I love her, and she loves me. I’m walking through this cancer journey with her, not only as her friend, but as her partner. I am exactly where I need to be — the only place I can be.

[From Facebook]

That was somewhat exhausting to read and there’s even more that I didn’t excerpt. While I understand that she believes she is living her truth and it’s admirable that she’s been there for her best friend as she’s dealing with cancer, cheating is cheating. Eat, Pray, Love read as self indulgent to me, and I see more of the same in this announcement. Good for her for realizing her best friend was her person, as she puts it, but she left her husband for Rayya and she’s trying to wrap it in the same kind of higher calling self awareness package. I shouldn’t be so cynical, it must so difficult to go through cancer treatment and she’s a loyal, caring person who stood by her friend’s side. Surely dealing with that experience bonded them. She explains their love as “the truth” and immutable when it is absolutely a choice to act on an attraction and leave your partner. We don’t know how that happened or if Gilbert was upfront with her husband. I suspect she left him similarly to how she explained leaving her first husband in Eat, Pray, Love and in that case it was all about her.

This is going to be another book as Kaiser asked about, right? This is going to be all about how she realized she loved Rayya and all about their cancer journey (that’s how she wrote it) and we just got a preview of what’s to come. I hope Rayya is doing well and that she’s responding to treatment.

Thank you for the love, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ?? pic.twitter.com/rkCZVyIDwg

— Elizabeth Gilbert (@GilbertLiz) September 7, 2016

Photos are from Twitter and Facebook. Header photo is from 2014. Other photos are from 2016