In the excellent movie Jerry Maguire, Jerry, who is played by Tom Cruise, is a sports agent who’s leaving the big firm he’s part of to go out on his own. Dorothy Boyd, played by Renee Zellweger, is an assistant at the firm who decides to leave and join him to build this new venture.
They were meeting over dinner to talk about that, and the conversation turns personal. Each one of them shares something about a relationship that failed. When Jerry tries to follow up with Dorothy on something she just shared, she decides not to talk about it anymore, and she looks at him when he inquires about it and says, “let’s not tell our sad stories.”
It’s an excellent example of the fact that when somebody wants to go a little bit further into something we’re uncomfortable with or that’s upsetting to talk about, we always have the power to choose what to think, feel, and say after that.