With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, many couples will be pulling out all the stops to spoil their loved ones but a new study indicates that young women are disillusioned with the most romantic day of the year and hate being reminded by brands they are single.

The insightful study conducted by market researchers Catalyx, collected the responses of 43 young British women who had grown apathetic about Valentine’s Day and it only served as a painful reminder of their loneliness as they were bombarded with soppy social media posts, cheesy gift ideas and glossy advertisements of loved up couples.

More than a quarter of respondents said they had never experienced celebrating the day with a partner before whilst 24% said their Valentine’s nightmare was being single and lonely. One participant even said the day was much more symptomatic of societal pressures on women saying “the worst for me is probably just the patriarchal demands functioning with capitalism to make a big deal of an otherwise normal day.”

Ultimately, most young single women prefer not to celebrate Valentine’s Day and are put off by the commercial exploitation of what should be a romantic day. Instead, some opted for a distraction from the loneliness associated with Valentine’s so preferred to embrace Galentine’s Day on February 13th, where they celebrate their friendships by giving gifts and organising girly activities to indulge and treat themselves.

For savvy brands looking for unique ways to reach young singletons, Galentine’s offers a fantastic alternative to Valentine’s Day as data from Pinterest reveals searches for ‘Galentine’s Day Ideas’ have seen a massive 1780% year on year increase. As Google searches for Galentine’s grows and female empowerment becomes the order of the day, brands should already be considering the importance of targeting singletons to take advantage of the rising trend.