Featured Image Credit: SWNS
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Parenting
Jess Hardiman
A mum has told how she's managed to remain best friends with her ex – and even helped set him up with a new girlfriend.
Mary McDaniel, 27, from Muncie, Indiana, split from her ex-partner Nathan Drumm, 29, in 2019, and at first she struggled to get on with him following their breakup.
But as we all know, time is a healer, meaning eventually the duo were able to work things out as they realised they needed to become friends again to co-parent their four-year-old son Silas together.
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Stay-at-home McDaniel had been brought up by divorced parents who ‘struggled to get along’, so she was determined not to follow in their footsteps.
She initially started inviting Drumm, a decorator technician, to play dates and the pair gradually rebuilt their friendship.
Now they’re so close that McDaniel even set her ex up with an old school friend, 26-year-old Shayla Farmer, who has been dating Drumm for three months.
McDaniel said: “We didn’t get on at all when we first split up.
My parents separated and didn’t get along and I didn’t want that for Silas.
“So, slowly I started inviting Nathan to stuff and we built up our friendship again.
“Now he’s over most days.
“I’m best friends with his new girlfriend and we meet up all the time - even when Nathan’s not around.
“Nathan will come over and stay the night on Christmas Eve, so Silas has us both when he wakes up on Christmas Day.
"We're not sure what we will do this year, we might go over to Shayla's but we haven't decided."
Drumm – who is also friendly with McDaniel’s ex-husband, 27-year-old Josh Sulzen – said he and his former partner ‘talk about pretty much everything’, saying ‘there is nothing off limits’.
“We grew up together and got together young, so we’ve known each other practically our whole lives,” he said.
McDaniel and Drumm split up in 2019 after four years of an on-and-off relationship, admitting they found co-parenting hard at first.
But after about six months, things started to improve and over time they ‘became best friends again’.
“Now our son still gets to do things with the both of us,” McDaniel said.
She helped set Drumm and her friend up in August 2022, with Farmer saying it was ‘kind of weird’ at first, but just had to ‘trust’ the process.
"Whenever I had an insecurity I voiced it and now it feels like a family,” she said.
"We hang out the three of us."
McDaniel married Josh Sulzen, a sprinkler fitter, and had two children together – two-year-old Jovie and one-year-old Story.
The duo still get on after separating in August 2022, and continue to co-parent their kids together.
Sulzen said he and Drumm ‘didn’t really get on’ but now ‘hang out with the kids together’.
"Mary and I have just separated so we're adjusting but hope to co parent like her and Nathan do,” he added.
McDaniel said Farmer recently showed her a lingerie outfit she was thinking of wearing for Drumm.
“I was like 'yes wear that',” she said.
“I don’t think a lot of people think that is normal.”
McDaniel said everyone will be together for Christmas and Easter, and that she feels it’s great they can all ‘get along and be friends’.