I want to define one-to-many relationship as follows; User has one introducer User has many newcomers(who is introduced by the user) Use "Introduction" model instead of adding a column to users table. My table and model definition is as follows; DB Scheme: create_table "introductions", force: true do |t| t.integer "introducer_id" t.integer "newcomer_id" t.datetime "created_at" t.datetime "updated_at" User model: class User < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :introductions, foreign_key: :introducer_id has_many :newcomers, through: :introductions, source: :newcomer belongs_to :introduction, foreign_key: :newcomer_id belongs_to :introducer end Introduction model: class Introduction < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :introducer, class_name: 'User' belongs_to :newcomer, class_name: 'User' end This works fine: user1.newcomers.push user2 but, user2.introducer # => nil How can I define belongs_to relationship correctly?