Where does it say that you have to get approval for an unpublished route? Not a good analogy anyway as there's nothing coming the other way on that route.
There is an obsession in this country with complying with rules that don't exist in the first place. So just make one up, in the name of safety of course.
There are some ATC's that make stuff happen, there are some that delight in stuffing around those that they assume pay 'nothing' for the privilege of gracing controlled airspace. Might pay some of them to do a little research on where the funding is coming from.
These scenarios don't happen in some countries that handle 10 times the traffic we do. Why's that?