It is Pride Month, and I want to write my headcanon for Naruto's attraction model... but heck, is it layered. This is the read I use across this blog, but I think most of it holds up to canon.
First and most important: this boy loves STRONGLY. And love is NOT tied to romantic or sexual feelings for him, AT ALL.
So even without shipping SNS, he will always LOVE Sasuke. Whoever else he marries. He will always love Sakura, as the one who was at his side the longest besides Iruka. To him, claiming that love is LESSER because it isn't romantic and/or sexual is like a slap in the face.
Next, his attraction model: He is demi-pan.
He doesn't really see gender — he sees a person, needs a deep bond, and sometimes a revealing moment for the romantic feeling to be realized. Same logic for his sexual attraction: gender doesn't matter, the bond does. He can absolutely see someone as pretty without giving it any real romantic/sexual weight.
Then there is the whole Sakura situation, which is honestly its own essay. Short version: the early crush is internalized heteronormativity, a performance. He wants to be inside the group, wants to be normal, and there's no framework offered to him for anything but heterosexuality. So crushing on the popular, pretty girl is the natural thing to do — it's what a boy his age is "supposed" to do. It becomes genuine feelings with time — but the how and why are for the other post (I shall write one day... )
On Sexy no Jutsu: it's a tool. He uses it against people he knows it works on — it's not him ogling. And note what he never gets: the arousal-gag reaction. No nosebleed, no lingering, none of what the trope hands to those with strong sexual attraction (Jiraiya, Sakura's own reaction to the boy-version in 347, etc). Even when Konohamaru shows off his variants, Naruto's reaction is either excitement for the craft — a teacher proud that his student pulled a new trick — or dryly scolding it as not good enough.
A practical note for shipping: real romance mostly isn't possible for him until Sasuke is back. He's frozen at the moment Sasuke left — and he subconsciously demands that stillness of mostly Sakura too. Their moving on, in any form, reads as betrayal to Sasuke. He doesn't know any of this about himself — he can't say "later," can't explain the block, often can't even register what's being offered. [Again a longer post coming... one day]
