The real problem with the relationship is that Hayden Christensen came off as a stalker creep. I don't care how tall, blond and good looking a guy is, ANY woman will have enough stalker-creep radar that she will sense his inherent stalker creepiness and avoid the guy.
TCW Anakin solves the problem nicely: he's not a stalker creep. He's attractive, charismatic, heroic and wildly in love with her. Why wouldn't she go for him? That shows how stunningly easy it can be to create a convincing romantic pairing. Just don't do something obviously wrong like making the guy act all rapey. TCW Anakin is not too far afield from Han Solo, so if that was the intent all along, they finally got it right.
For the movies, either Lucas should have told Christensen "stop acting like a rapist!" or if he couldn't stop (I hope for his sake, that was just acting), fire the guy and hire someone who can play the role correctly. I mean jeezus, I wouldn't even have wanted to be on the same set as the guy, nevermind in scenes with him.
My hunch is that George didn't even get that there was a problem. He just decided, "they're in luuuuvvvv" without seeing the necessity of convincing the audience of it by writing convincing love scenes, hiring actors with chemistry together, hiring actors who won't act like weird stalker creeps, etc.