Elizabeth Gilbert, author of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, now dating best friend

FAMOUS author Elizabeth Gilbert has revealed she is now dating her female best friend after realising they were in love with each other.

Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert with her best friend and now lover, Rayya Elias.

ELIZABETH Gilbert has moved on from her husband with a woman.

In a Facebook post published on Wednesday, the Eat, Pray, Love author, who announced her separation from her husband in July, revealed she is in a relationship with her best friend Rayya Elias.

In the spring, Elias, another writer, was diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer, “a disease for which there is no cure,” Gilbert wrote.

“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.”

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. Picture: Paul Jeffers/AP

But since the diagnosis, something became clear to Gilbert: her and Elias’ relationship had changed dramatically.

“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,” she wrote.

The Big Magic writer also admits this burgeoning love is the reason why she announced her separation from José Nunes — who readers of Eat, Pray, Love knew as “Felipe”.

“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,” Gilbert wrote.

“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.”

Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert and Javier Bardem as Felipe in Eat, Pray, Love.

She continued, “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.”

Gilbert, an author who has often made her life the focus of her work, explains that she and Elias are coming forward now because of how important truth and transparency are to both women.

The heartfelt Facebook post had 9000 “loves” and 7500 “likes” as of late afternoon. After the positive response on social media, Gilbert took to Twitter to thank her fans.

“Thank you for the love, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” she tweeted with an image of a heart.

Javier Bardem as Felipe and Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love.

She also responded to wellwishers on Facebook, telling one, “May it be infinite while it lasts. Thank you for the gift of these words.”

Her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across, Italy, India and Indonesia, details her adventures during a year of travelling the world following her divorce from her first hubby.

The memoir was hugely popular, and stayed on The New York Times’ bestseller list for more than 200 weeks, with more than 10 million copies sold worldwide.

In 2010, the book was turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem as Felipe, a businessman from Brazil who Gilbert falls in love with on her travels, and whose role was based on Nunes.

Elias wrote Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post Punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side, a memoir about her own struggles with casual sex, pornography, cocaine and heroin.

She was born in Syria, and moved to Michigan with her family when she was eight. She moved to Gotham in 1983, where she wound up homeless for a time.

This article originally appeared on The New York Post.