friendships

friendships_controller.rb

    @friends_out = Friendship.where(:user_id=>current_user.id) #users "i" want to be friends with
    @friends_in = Friendship.where(:friend_id=>current_user.id) #users who want to be friend with "me"
    # users who haven't added "my" id to Friendship and vice versa
    # user who are my friend and i'm their friends.

Assuming you are using a SQL DB, you could do:

In your user model:

has_and_belongs_to_many :fields
has_and_belongs_to_many :friends, :class_name => "User",
:foreign_key => "other_user_id"

in your controller

@friends = UsersUser.where(:status=>friend && :user_id => current_user.id)
@friends_out = UsersUser.where(:status=>pending && :other_user_id => current_user.id)
@friends_in = UsersUser.where(:status=>pending && :user_id => current_user.id)

So in this example if you wanted to be a friend with me, your id would be the other_user_id and mine would be user_id and the status could be set to pending, if I accept you could change the status to accepted or however you would like.

Also if @user is equal to the current logged in user, in your view you could just call @user.friends to get all of your friends regardless of status.

the UsersUser model you have there is similar to the Friendship model in

http://railscasts.com/episodes/163-self-referential-association

You way adds a status, so you just need to accept those who have added you.

I understand what you are doing now with status, is saves the cross referencial query.

thanks.