“It’s still two human beings trying to get along, so it’s going to be complicated,” wrote Elizabeth Gilbert in her 2006 best-selling memoir, Eat, Pray, Love. “And love is always complicated.”

It is a sentiment that her fans have embraced in the hours following her revelation that she has ended her marriage to her husband after falling in love and beginning a same-sex relationship with her best friend.

Gilbert’s Facebook page – where she talked about realising she was in love with Rayya Elias after the Syrian-born writer was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic and liver cancer – has been inundated by well-wishers who have praised the author’s courage and honesty.

“Death – or the prospect of death – has a way of clearing away everything that is not real,” wrote Gilbert. “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.”



Among more than 10,000 comments below the post, one friend wrote: “It seems you and your life have been put on this earth to be our unfaltering beacon, our truth-giver and our steady guide. Ever since Eat, Pray, Love, you’ve been an inspiration.”



Many sought to answer the author’s call for “whatever extra love you might be carrying around in your hearts right now” to be sent in her and Elias’ direction. “This made me cry, like many of your posts,” wrote one fan. “Tears of joy, anguish, truth, human-ness, sorrow, pain, fear, beauty, love..... So much. So, so much. My heart is exploding with love and it’s coming your way.”



Later-in-life lesbians – women who identify as lesbians or declare same-sex feelings in their 30s, often after serious relationships, marriage and children – have come more into the public consciousness in recent years, with a string of high-profile women publicly leaving heterosexual relationships for female partners.

British retail guru Mary Portas was married to a man for 14 years and had two children before marrying and having a child with fashion editor-at-large Melanie Rickey. Cynthia Nixon – who played Miranda in Sex and the City, was in a heterosexual relationship for 15 years before she fell in love with Christine Marinoni; while actor Portia de Rossi was married to a man before she married comedian and talkshow host Ellen DeGeneres in 2008.



Women coming out later in life is not a new phenomenon, said Ruth Hunt, head of LGBT rights organisation Stonewall. Women entering a different stage in their lives have often explored their own identity and sexuality because they “possibly care less about what people think and they feel more confident about who they are”.



Comedian Ellen DeGeneres, left, married actor Portia de Rossi in 2008. De Rossi was previously married to a man. Photograph: BFA.com/REX Shutterstock

But more accepting attitudes to sexuality, coupled with the legalisation of gay marriage in many countries – at least in the west – have helped empower older women to be open about their sexuality in a way that may have felt impossible when they were younger, according to relationship and sex therapist Clare Prendergast.



“The environment is very different in terms of legislation, and it is a much safer world to come out into,” she said.



And younger generations, who have grown up with role models such as supermodel Cara Delevingne who thought nothing of kissing her girlfriend at last year’s London fashion week to actor Ruby Rose who has described herself as “very gender fluid”, may increasingly find sexuality labels redundant.



Susie Orbach, who spent more than 30 years with the writer Joseph Schwartz, and had two children with him, before marrying novelist Jeanette Winterson, writes in the Guardian on Friday: “We are finally beginning to recognise that sexuality is neither a binary nor fixed. That love, attraction, identity, attachment and sexuality are more layered and interesting than they have been allowed to be represented in the public space until now and that as their complexity is opened up to us, the crudity of realising you were always gay or always straight is for many people a nonsense.”

Jan Gooding, chair of Stonewall and group brand director with insurers Aviva, said that women who shift sexuality later in life are often keen not to be labelled in any way – like Gilbert, who does not explicitly refer to herself as a lesbian in her post but rather declares that she loves another woman.

Gooding speaks from experience: she had been married for 16 years “to a very wonderful man” and had two sons when she fell in love with another woman, but said she feels very protective of her husband and children and previous relationship. “People find it difficult to believe that I could fall in love with a woman out of the blue,” she said. “But it does happen, people haven’t necessarily been holding out until middle age. This idea that everybody knows deep down does a great disservice to individual journeys.”

Among Gilbert’s digital well-wishers, there were those who expressed sadness about the end of her marriage to Jose Nunes – whom she wrote about meeting in Eat, Pray, Love and its sequel Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.

“My heart breaks for Jose. I’m sad that his heart and wellbeing appear to be overlooked in this thread of congratulations. I remember he’d said to you ‘Be gentle with me’ [...] Blessings to all of you, and may you all find your way.” The comment provoked a quick retort from another fan: “So I think you can swiftly jump off from that moral high horse and in future remember that you can not take the sting out of your comment by ending it off with “blessings”.

Yet, Gilbert’s emotional post – in which she states simply: “I love her, and she loves me” – has prompted celebrations among the ranks of late-blooming lesbians, according to Andrea Hewitt, author of the blog A Late Life Lesbian Story and organiser of a support group for women coming out after heterosexual relationships. “The women in our group are thrilled,” said Hewitt, who has two children and came out five years ago after two marriages. “Many of them have been told ‘you’re confused, you’re having a midlife crisis’, so for them this really validates their experience.”