'Whats missing on my Ruby 'Inverse Of' relationship

I know this topic has been addressed, but I have been at this for 2 days and I'm just stuck. I know inverse of does not create a new query, so should I use another method?

Question: How to set up an 'inverse of' with a has_one, belongs_to situation & same class..

Explanation: A user 'has_one :spouse' and 'belongs_to :spouse_from'. They are inverse of each other. When a User signs up, they can invite their significant other. For Example

  1. user_a invites & creates user_b
  2. user_b.spouse_id is set to user_a.id
  3. In a separate method I want to be able to update like.. user_a.spouse_id = user_a.spouse.id

The only association that works at this point is user_b.spouse.

 Class User
  has_one :spouse, class_name: 'User', foreign_key: :spouse_id, dependent: :nullify, inverse_of: :spouse_from


  belongs_to :spouse_from, class_name: 'User', foreign_key: :spouse_id, inverse_of: :spouse, optional: true
sqlruby-on-railsrubypostgresql


Solution 1:[1]

You need a step 2b in your initial setup to associate a spouse to user_a:

1a) user_a invites & creates user_b
2a) user_b.spouse_id is set to user_a.id
2b) user_a.spouse_id is set to user_b.id (after saving user_b to get an ID for it)
3a) ...

This will allow you to later perform the update you wish in another method. The reason that other method update (user_a.spouse_id = user_a.spouse.id) doesn't work right now is because user_a.spouse is nil at the time since that association hasn't been made yet.

However, and maybe most importantly, that update you describe (user_a.spouse_id = user_a.spouse.id) will never actually accomplish anything, as the right side will always evaluate to the same value that already exists on the left side.

Sources

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Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1

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