If anything it’s more of a language thing that stuck when translated. Japanese uses their word for confession (kokuhaku) both for confessing to a crime and professing one’s love/attraction. The latter is also often how people are asked out (think “I really like you, do you want to go for dinner” – the “I really like you” bit is the “confession”).

It could’ve been localised as asking out instead, but the more literal translation was used often enough to become normalized. So now we see “he confessed to her” instead of “he asked her out” in translations a lot when the former is a fairly typical Japanese way of saying the latter.