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"For all the hype and publicity that Elizabeth Gilbert&amp;#039;s book Eat, Pray, Love and recent film have gotten, there has been relatively little out there about the ex-husband, from whom she divorced, sparking her year-long trip. Overall, Gilbert is very generous to him, taking most of the blame and responsibility for their failed marriage, but she does get a few jabs in.  She suggests at one point in the book that she was both the financial provider in the marriage as well as the homemaker; and in the movie he is depicted as a bit of a flake who derived his identity from being her husband, more than from his own passions. But is that who he really is?  The fact that we have heard so little about the man, despite the public replay of his heartbreak and divorce, already shows that he has class. And, perhaps would&amp;#039;ve been done some justice if Gilbert, at least briefly, talked about why she fell in love with him in the first place. The Daily Beast , in an attempt to clear up the mystery, recently wrote an article about him. For starters, his name is Michael Cooper.  &amp;quot;A decade after Gilbert divorced him, Cooper is now married to a Canadian diplomat named B\u00A9atrice Maill\u00A9. They have two young boys, Charlie and Sammy. According to his LinkedIn profile, he&amp;#039;s currently a public interest law scholar at the GeorgetownUniversityLawCenter, and he was previously a director for Mercy Corps and Human Rights Watch,&amp;quot; Danielle Friedman wrote in the Daily Beast. He sounds pretty impressive to me. It&amp;#039;s also interesting what he chose to do after their divorce, compared to what Gilbert did.  Don&amp;#039;t get me wrong, I really enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love. But Gilbert&amp;#039;s trip was pretty self-indulgent. And while her time in the Indian Ashram was a spiritual journey, it was a spiritual journey for herself.  Cooper, on the other hand, traveled through Kosovo, Mongolia, Iran, Iraq, and other developing countries, to work with people displaced by natural disaster and armed conflict. In no way do I want to compare the two people&amp;#039;s process for healing. When it comes to emotional and mental survival, I say, to each his own. But I do think that despite taking blame for the divorce, Gilbert portrays Cooper as lacking depth and passion for life. So he wanted a family and children, but he clearly also wanted to contribute and engage with the world to make it a better place.  Instead of him being boring and directionless, I wonder if Gilbert was the flake (which is often the flip side of creativity and artistic talent, which she has oodles of) and he was the rock that Gilbert&amp;#039;s ship kept crashing against. Whoever he was, it sounds like two people who met young, but who grew apart. Two people who had passion for life, but whose passion took them in different directions. It just would&amp;#039;ve been nice if she&amp;#039;d depicted him that way.  - Alexandra Gekas, Associated Editor "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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