Anytime you find yourself saying, "How dare he do X? That's creepy! Don't ever do X, folks!", ask yourself if you would have the same reaction if you liked this person and welcomed X. If the answer is no, you've misdiagnosed the problem.

I think the truth of that statement depends on how you chunk the behavior.

To get back to this, Rene's approaches to Genevieve would have been appropriate as behaviors in that sort of a relationship if you chunk them as things a person might do, and very inappropriate because she was moving away from him/not responding, etc., so that if your chunk includes what she does (not to mention that a relationship didn't already exist) as well as what he does, you get a different answer.