In this study – Just a girlfriend who lives far away? – I interview fifteen girls about their experiences with computer mediated relationships. From a queer theoretical perspective I examine how these girls do and talk about their relationships, in relation to norms about relationships and sexuality as well as notions about online and offline.
My aim is to discuss in which ways the performing of these relationships both reproduce and challenge norms about relationships and sexuality. The girls I interview attempt in different ways to show that doing relationships online is just as ”normal” as doing them offline. While normative assumptions about components such as monogamy and love as being vital to a relationship often are reproduced in the performing of these relationships, I assert that the ways in which these relationships are done hold a subversive potential to challenge normative understandings of concepts such as relationship, sexuality, sex, physicality and closeness.