A man has been criticised for his unusual approach to finding love

Can't blame a guy for trying.

A man in England tried to make a huge romantic gesture to find love but found himself at the receiving end of a lot of criticism instead. After Craig Sullivan's wife died from cancer, he decided that he needed to try and find someone to spend his life with. In order to stand out from the crowd and make a grand gesture, he wrote 2,000 messages and put them in glass bottles which he then began to throw out to sea. The father of one said that he did it because he was 'lonely'. He filled the bottles with a piece of paper that included an email address for people to get in touch with him, hoping that it might find him love.

The finished article. 100 ready to go in Portland bay at high tide. It's pissing down like a perfect English July. Now the caps to do.. pic.twitter.com/63GvpKfilf

— Craig Sullivan (@OptimiseOrDie) July 21, 2017

But, what he didn't expect was to receive a lot of complaints for littering. According to The Mirror, a woman came across 30 of the bottles washed up on her local beach in Wales. Helen Rhiannon Gill, who found the bottles, said at first she thought it was sweet but then when she spotted all 30 it annoyed her. She said:

“I went for a beach walk and we came across about 30 glass bottles with lids. They had lots of messages inside about finding love and at first, I thought it was some sort of dating thing but then I looked on his website and I got the idea. It’s very romantic, but my friends are members of the Marine Conservation Society and they, and I, were very concerned about what it is doing to the environment."

She said that she wrote to him explaining the implications of his plan. Craig then confirmed on Facebook that he had taken the criticism on board and has cancelled his plan to throw more bottles out to sea.

"There has been a rather unpleasant backlash to my intentions, which were always not to achieve this sort of reaction. Whilst I always welcome rational argument and debate, this has become too personal and nasty, so it's over. It has brought out a kind of irrational hatred and abuse out of proportion to the scale or the original intent of my project. It’s been quite saddening to read all these this morning but it won’t affect my optimism or plans - to find someone new. It’s time for a pivot on this and a rethink - but first I will use the rest of my time this week, to take a tour of a few places I’d like to go. We will enjoy the rest of this trip, despite the unpleasant stuff that’s happened.