MySQL query to show mutual friend suggestions

I am developing a website and have a query to show mutual friend suggestions, however the query isn't working perfectly. These friend suggestions will each have a button that when clicked will send a friend request to the user. The query that I have now shows mutual friend suggestions but is also displaying members who the user has already sent a request to. I do not want these people in the list, since a request has already been sent from the user viewing this list. `friends` table structure with sample data --------------------------------------- id, user_id, friend_id, status, date 149 1253343 1243522 0 1567894334 150 1243522 1253343 1 1567894334 151 1262117 1441712 2 1578241277 152 1441712 1262117 2 1578241277 When a user requests a friendship, two rows are inserted into the database, one for the requester and one for the requested. The requester row has a status of 1 while the requested row has a status of 0. Any status 2 means a confirmed friendship between two users. Here is the current query that needs to be modified to not show rows with a 0 or 1. In other words it shouldn't return users who have already sent or received a request from the user. The query should only return users who have not been sent a request yet from the user or have not sent one to this user. This database query stuff is a little over my head. I'm not sure if there is a query generator program that would help me with these complicated queries but for now I am requesting assistance from the developer community. Good luck! SELECT a.friend_id, COUNT(*) as relevance, GROUP_CONCAT(a.user_id ORDER BY a.user_id) as mutual_friends FROM friends a JOIN friends b ON ( b.friend_id = a.user_id AND [login to view URL] = 2 AND b.user_id = ".$_SESSION['user_id']." ) LEFT JOIN friends c ON ( c.friend_id = a.friend_id AND [login to view URL] = 2 AND c.user_id = ".$_SESSION['user_id']." ) WHERE [login to view URL] = 2 AND c.user_id IS NULL AND a.friend_id != ".$_SESSION['user_id']." GROUP BY a.friend_id ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 5