New Bride Writes Open Letter at 42 to Single Women Everywhere: 'F--- the Way it's Supposed to Happen' (Exclusive)

Fitness influencer Aly Teich spent years being "the single one." A week before her wedding, she wrote an open letter to single women everywhere

When fitness influencer Aly Teich fell in love and got engaged in 2022, after years of always being considered "the single one," she wasn't sure how to tell her friends and social media followers about the happy milestone without making some of them feel, well, less than.

"For years I felt like I was left behind as all my friends got married or had children," say Teich, 42, who started the fitness lifestyle brand Sweat Life, and now works in content strategy for Nike in Los Angeles.

"I was running a small business doing all these awesome things, but I think as a woman, and for men too, all these other things are trumped by the one thing that's expected of you.... we were raised that the norm was by your late twenties you should have met someone and gotten married and starting a family by your early thirties."

The experience of doing neither left her lonely and often depressed.

"Always seeing my friends on vacations and with their families and popping out babies and having weddings and getting engaged and it all looks so happy in the years when I was really feeling lonely and left behind...it certainly factors into the game of comparison. And really, how can you not compare when you are just being fed content of other people's lives at all times?" she says.

After she met and fell in love with her now-husband Jay Edwards when she was 40, she was hesitant about sharing the experience on her social media in case she made someone feel bad. So a week before her late October destination wedding, she wrote a letter titled "An Open Letter to All Single People From a Recently Single 42-Year-Old Soon-to-be-Bride."

"Before I flood you with a deluge of wedding content, I felt compelled to address all of the single people out there, with the intention of helping you feel a little more seen in your very real experiences and to hopefully offer you some, well, hope," she wrote on her Instagram.

She continued, "I keenly remember the feelings that would be evoked each time I would see a post announcing yet another engagement, another wedding, another baby being born, or anything else that only confirmed my belief that I was somehow behind, or worse, failing at life."

"While I just wanted to feel happy for these people (and I was!) I was also left feeling generally lesser about myself and would cycle through the same questions of self-doubt: 'What am I doing wrong? What is wrong with me? Am I going to die alone?"

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Teich goes on to explain how she felt like she was in a different class than married friends, and while she wanted her letter to validate single life, she also wrote about finally finding real love — and says it looked nothing like what she was expecting.

She says getting to this place, where she was able to meet someone she even wanted to marry, came through years of hard work, going to therapy, breaking bad habits, and generational cycles.

"This dedication to myself led me to be in a different place with myself, to look for and value different and deeper qualities in a partner. And most importantly, be ready to be the partner I would want in someone else," she wrote.

She says the idea of "He's still out there' is true.

"But you have to be ready to recognize and choose the good ones, if they don't come in the exact package you were originally looking for or expecting," she says.

Teich tells PEOPLE that the positive response she's received from the post has been overwhelming.

"I almost felt like it was my duty, in a way, to my former self and to everyone out there to address it and help people feel seen and validated in their very real struggles of being single," she says. "And that I knew the feelings from seeing that kind of content online."

Teich and her new husband Jay just celebrated their love with a destination wedding at Flora Farms, San José del Cabo, Mexico, and she said it was the perfect day. She says despite yeras of feeling like the odd man out as a single person at weddings, she's glad it finally happened when she was 42.

"I'm so grateful that I got to do it at this age,' says Teich, who wore Liz Martinez dress bought at El Blanc in L.A. She paired the look with Valentino shoes and KKane jewelry.

"I think we're at an age where the friends we have in our lives are really meaningful friendships. And our parents are either gone or older, so we weren't doing it for anyone other than ourselves."

While she's looking forward to newlywed life, she says she'll never lose sight of who she was when she was single, and is just thrilled that her message resonated with so many women.

"F--- the way it's "supposed to happen according to society, your family, your married friends, or anyone else except for YOU," she wrote in her letter.

She tells PEOPLE, "All of us are conditioned in some way, shape, or form to think life should go or should look a certain way at certain points, and I just want to hand everyone a permission slip to remember that there are a lot fewer shoulds in this life than we think there are."

"And I think once we start to let go of those 'shoulds' and really lean into the way we want to do, it is truer to ourselves, and there's a lot of joy to derive from that. Because otherwise, you can punish yourself if you're not living up to those 'shoulds,' and that creates a lot of unhappiness."

Plus, she does believe that even though modern dating is rough, there are good guys out there. "I want people to know what I went through to get here, and maybe have some hope from it."