As far as I know you only have to say that a user has an account level and not both! It's all in the documentation

http://laravel.com/docs/eloquent#one-to-one

Thanks blackbirddev, that's the documentation I've been using to port my SQL statements over.

I can see how I can find 1 relational record by using a foreign key but not how to call a record and it's associated relational data.

example:
the doc shows me how to pull a record from 'phone' that is related to a 'user'

my need:
I need to pull a 'user' record and also the associated 'accountlevel' record related from the user record

This is where I'm getting a logic disconnect with Eloquent. It looks like I've structured my models correctly but when I try to add

->with('accountlevel')

it generates a Laravel error instead of returning the user record + associated data from accountlevel as designed.

I built this in Laravel's Query Builder as a work around.

public function showUser($id) {  
  $user = DB::table('users')  
    ->leftJoin('accountlevel', 'users.accountlevel', '=', 'accountlevel.id')  
    ->select('users.id as user_id', 'users.emailaddress as emailaddress', 'users.nickname as nickname', 'users.password as password', 'accountlevel.id as accountlevel_id', 'accountlevel.name as accountlevel_name')  
    ->where('users.id', '=', $id)  
    ->first()  
return View::make('profile')->with('user', $user);  
}

views/profile.blade.php

@extends('layout')  
@section('title', ucfirst($user->nickname))  
@section('content')  
  <p><strong>users</strong><br />  
    id: <span>{{ $user->user_id }}</span><br />  
    emailaddress: <span>{{ $user->emailaddress }}</span><br />  
    nickname: <span>{{ ucfirst($user->nickname) }}</span><br />  
    password: <span>{{ $user->password }}</span><br />  
    accountlevel: <span>{{ ucfirst($user->accountlevel_name) }} ({{ $user->accountlevel_id }})</span>  
  </p>  
@stop

Which works but still doesn't use Eloquent.