in a perfect world..

To get logic and dispute out of the way, YES, naturally it is a best friend thing to include them and wanting them to do the same things as you. And also within the span of the show, Cory has seen people behave strangely behind this “love thing” (which is really this “inevitable” girl thing). He’s even been abandoned at times for girls/“love”. So, it makes sense why he doesn’t want to participate and why he doesn’t want Shawn to either.

He’s seen where this path of love and girls and hormones lands people. And that’s all to it. From a completely straight narrative it’s practical.

BUT we arent here for the “logical” and straight narrative 🤭

With all that being said, for Cory it’s less about others. It’s more about Shawn.

In most instances Cory assumes Shawn into his same beliefs about girls/love.

And when presented with this undesirable interested-in-girls behavior from his brother, Cory looked past his small lens of life, and disdain for the idea in general, to encourage Eric to call back the same girl Eric had abandoned him for. Which resulted in Cory saying “I’m told love is worth it” and shrugs like that’s gotta be the farthest thing from the truth.

With Shawn he isn’t capable of doing this.

He gets defensive instead.

When Shawn was interested in a girl, Cory took it upon himself to basically retaliate. He tried to pursue a girl too. I guess to teach Shawn a lesson or something?

Like maybe with the hopes that Shawn would feel the same way. That he’d see what Cory was doing was obviously horribly wrong and then stop pursuing girls himself for Cory’s sake?

Cory claims he isn’t understanding of love and romance but the whole time he IS. He makes promises with Shawn and to Shawn, he makes sacrifices for Shawn (even ones that could land him in a lot of trouble), and he behaves recklessly and dramatically on behalf of his feelings towards Shawn. He does some of the same things with Shawn that he despises so much about people being in love basically.

(And Cory doesn’t get the idea of love because of the emphasis of it pertaining to girls. It would no doubt click if someone really in depth explained that for HIM those things apply to Shawn at times. Or that the infinite potential of love can be pursued by more than a man and a woman. He still wouldn’t get it though because his feelings are so ingrained)

I’ve mentioned it before that it seems that Cory has these feelings and doesn’t know because he assumes this just has to do with being friends. And he’s never known what it’s like to NOT feel this way about his best friend.

To summarize, Cory’s feelings are romantic. To him, they’re normal friendly Shawn feelings. The crush or love he has for Shawn is so fundamental to his connection with Shawn it’s just a product of their friendship in his mind.

With Cory having these wires crossed, he assumes Shawn feels the same. Because he’s equating their friendship to these feelings that are just apart of him now.

What Cory doesn’t understand is that, Shawn does feel the same about their actual friendship. This deeper misattributed layer Cory has is solely his own. His aversion to girls and love, and roping Shawn into it is about that layer.

When Shawn pursues girls, Cory is jealous and he doesn’t understand that he can mean just as much to Shawn, with him liking and pursuing girls. He doesn’t understand this because of what Shawn means to HIM.

Of course, this would have to be patiently but firmly spelled out for Cory. That what he feels for Shawn isn’t just friendship and Shawn’s not doing anything wrong by pursuing girls other than breaking Cory’s jealous little heart lol

This idea of Shawn’s compliance starts to change for Cory as the show goes on, however. But maybe that’s why Cory just started giving in to the pressure to follow the heterosexual narrative.

My question is I wonder if Shawn didn’t disregard these 'pacts'.... and if he didn’t start being interested in girls/pursuing girls: what would’ve happened? Would Cory have not started feeling like he was late and left out?