How to create a custom @Query on Spring Boot using a non Entity table?

I am stuck at a simple Friends schema. I have a User entity that has a List of users as friends. Spring is creating for me tbl_friends that will keep the data of the join, like I set user 1 to be friends of user3 and user4. When I pick the user1 it gets the user3 and user4 as friends. That is working fine, but what I want to do is when I get user3 it keeps the information of it being friends with user1.

@GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.IDENTITY) private Integer id; private String userName; private String fullName; private String phoneNumber; private String email; @ManyToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, fetch = FetchType.LAZY) @JoinTable(name="TBL_FRIENDS", joinColumns=@JoinColumn(name="person_id"), inverseJoinColumns=@JoinColumn(name="friend_id") ) private List<User> friends; @JsonIgnore @ManyToMany(mappedBy = "friends") private List<User> friendOf; 

In a regular SQL query all I would to do to get a list of users friends of user3 would be:

SELECT user.id, user.full_name, FROM user INNER JOIN tbl_friends f ON user.id = f.person_id WHERE f.friend_id = 3 ; // (this code actually works on h2-console to check the tables created by spring jpa)

When I try do something similar in UserRepository it gives and error because it expects a path (?)

 @Query("SELECT u FROM User u INNER JOIN tbl_friends f ON User.id = f.personId WHERE f.friendId = :objId") List<User> findByFriendsId(@Param("objId") Integer friend_id);``` **This the error: ** ```2020-05-04 18:39:55.660 INFO 22292 --- [ restartedMain] o.h.e.t.j.p.i.JtaPlatformInitiator : HHH000490: Using JtaPlatform implementation: [org.hibernate.engine.transaction.jta.platform.internal.NoJtaPlatform] 2020-05-04 18:39:55.666 INFO 22292 --- [ restartedMain] j.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean : Initialized JPA EntityManagerFactory for persistence unit 'default' 2020-05-04 18:39:55.694 WARN 22292 --- [ restartedMain] o.s.b.d.a.OptionalLiveReloadServer : Unable to start LiveReload server 2020-05-04 18:39:55.995 ERROR 22292 --- [ restartedMain] o.h.hql.internal.ast.ErrorTracker : Path expected for join! 2020-05-04 18:39:56.000 ERROR 22292 --- [ restartedMain] o.h.hql.internal.ast.ErrorTracker : Path expected for join! antlr.SemanticException: Path expected for join!```