Romance in the age of #METOO

Almost everyone who knows me post my relationship with my husband knows the story of how we met: I stalked him at his place of work for a month, and then finally got up the nerve to say, "Um, I saw you like Doctor Who, and I like Doctor Who, and do you want to grab a soda and talk about Doctor Who?" And we hit it off, and have been fairly inseparable ever since, nearly thirty years.
And we all say, "Aw, what a sweet, romantic story," right?
But in the age of #METOO, I keep thinking, what if the situation were reversed? If I were a man who stood in the paperbacks every day staring a female worker? That woman would have had security walk her to her car every night. Or what if I were a man who had stalked Nick (Nick's bi-sexuality not-withstanding)?
I was eighteen and weighed 105 pounds. Nick's age was unknown to me, and my college roommate pointed out that he might actually have been in high school making me the pedophile (he was actually twenty-three).

I just asked him if he would have been fine with the situation if I had been a teen-age boy. He said yes. What if I had been a middle-aged man? Maybe less so. He was ogled often. He was a pretty boy in eyeliner and too tight pants. He also had a green belt in karate, and perhaps an over-inflated, sense of his own ability to defend himself (he weighed 125 pounds at the time). But there are always guns, knives, clubs, crazy people.
I have been thinking about the problem of the "romantic overture" vs. creeping. The flirt vs. harassment. The difference is in consent, the wishes of the object of desire, but also in the outcome--soul-mate vs. victim (or even just hot one-night stand)--but the outcome cannot be known at the outset.
Nick passively consented and was attracted to me as well, but I couldn't know that when I was taking the bus every night after class to stare at the man I believed I had fallen in love with without exchanging a word.
We have a myth about finding true-love, the fairy-tale ending, love at first sight. Prince Charming can kiss Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty without her consent because it's "meant to be," they are destined to be together. We look for it, both sexes. We want it. And we forgive creeper behavior when it works out.
Obviously someone like Harvey Weinstein wasn't looking for true-love, or Anthony Weiner, or even Bill Clinton. But how many stalkers, creepers, overly-aggressive harassers justify their own actions because they know in their hearts that it's "true love" and eventually the object of desire will realize it too--as I did. How many victims passively allow things to progress beyond where they are comfortable because this might be the one?