[SOLVED]Laravel Eloquent Relationships -- equivalent of MYSQL "join"

It seems that in all that Laravel Eloquent relationships can do, it isn't possible to have it add an INNER JOIN clause. Am I correct in that? whereHas clauses add a WHERE EXISTS subquery, and with clauses preform "eager loading" that just loads the relationship in separate queries.
Obviously, there are a lot of cases where an INNER JOIN is going to be way more efficient than running a bunch of queries, so I have written a join clause for these queries.

1. Is it possible to use an eloquent relationship to define a join clause so that I don't have to rewrite the same join query every time I use the 2 tables together?
   
2. If not, why? It seems like joining 2 tables that are related would be something that should be standardized. I can't really see how adding a subquery like WHERE EXISTS would be a suitable substitute. (according to my tests, it generates much slower queries....)
   

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