In my application I have users that are able to be friends with other users.

This is controlled with a users table and a friends_users table.

The friends_users table has the following columns: id, user_id, friend_id, status

And the model User looks like:

public $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
        'Friend'=>array(
            'className'              => 'User',
            'joinTable'              => 'friends_users',
            'foreignKey'             => 'user_id',
            'associationForeignKey'  => 'friend_id'
        )
    );

This seems to work fine when viewing the Users for a user who is in the user_id column, but doesn't work the other way around, i.e. in reverse... Any ideas why?

Here is the method I use to list the friends for a user:

$user = $this->User->find('first', array( 
                    'conditions' => array('User.id' => $this->Auth->user('id')),
                    'contain'=>'Profile'
                ));

        $friends = $this->User->find('first', 
            array(
                'conditions'=>array(
                   'User.id'=>$user['User']['id']
                ),
                'contain'=>array(
                    'Profile',
                    'Friend'=>array(
                        'Profile',
                        'conditions'=>array(
                            'FriendsUser.status'=>1
                        )
                    )
                )
            )
        );

        $this->set('friends', $friends);