Nice to see this Thread bumped
up. I suspect you have seen the series before. Are you watching it on ABC Family or do you own the DVDs?
I'm on the fence about Joey telling Dawson about his mom. She did go to Gail to give her an opportunity to come clean. After all, Mitch and Gail were also like a second family to Joey, so she had to respect that to some degree. Dawson did a similar thing in S2 when he approached Joey's dad first before going to Joey about the drug dealing.
The thing with Pacey and Dawson is they have been friends for so many years and when you are small children there really isn't anything all that different between friends at that age. I does come with time. My son and his best friend were inseparable right from Primary until High school and then they got different friends.