Mitt Romney is that friend you have who can’t stop trying to get back together with his ex, no matter how obvious it is—to everyone else—that it’s just not going to happen for him. Except in this case, Romney’s ex is the presidency, and they were never a “thing” in the first place.

It’s hard to watch! In Mitt, the Netflix documentary about Romney’s perennial campaign, the Romney family is left to console their patriarch, all while vowing to never tolerate another presidential campaign. Mitt is a somber movie, one that almost endeared its normally robotic titular character to even his harshest critics. It painted a largely sympathetic portrait of a man who risks being thought of, in the words of his own family, as “a laughing stock.” It also gave us this scene, a depressing look at what losing a presidential campaign looks like:

Brutal. And yet, the drumbeat of Romney’s forever race to nowhere is again growing louder. What started as shocked whispers from within the conservative political establishment has spilled onto the page, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. “Romney is talking with advisers, consulting with his family, keeping a close eye on the emerging ’16 Republican field, and carefully weighing the pluses and minuses of another run,” writes Byron York for Washington Examiner. Bernie Quigley, at The Hill: “Can a more perfect Republican dream team be imagined going into 2016 than former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval?” A 4,210-word Politico magazine article entitled “Third Time’s the Charm” attempted to paint Romney as “a poster boy” using the theory of expertise posited in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: “For Romney, a third run would feature a far more confident and relaxed man—a 10,000-hour candidate.”

Then there’s Ann Romney, on Fox News, responding to Neil Cavuto’s imagined scenario in which Jeb Bush elects not to run, with this sound-bite–ready line: “Well, we will see, won’t we, Neil?”

To be sure, Mitt has described himself as a bit washed-up (earlier this month: “My time has come and gone”), and Ann, despite the window-opener, said she thinks Bush will run. “I know you’re going to press, but you know, this is something we gave a lot of thought to when, early on, I decided we’re not going to be running this time,” Romney said in a late-August radio interview. “And you know, circumstances can change, but I’m just not going to let my head go there.”