Just friends?

My friend just called, sounding very concerned and worried about the wellbeing of mum and me. So useless, he felt, so wanting to say something or so something to help, but he cannot.

I appreciate his concern, as I've done over the past two three years since he's entered my life. But after we became a couple, after we split up, I feel it's too awkward for him to care so much, to become so worried and feel useless when I'm down or upset by something. 

Perhaps it's just me, unable to understand fully the fine lines and conventions of what it means to be friends, and to be lovers. More to the point, perhaps i'm naive as to how to denarcate the boundaries after breaking up and going back to just friends. The problem lies with me, i know, for he is just doing what he has always done- and that's to care for me, to care about me.

But I just find it so terribly awkward to accept this kind of care and concern from him, especially after we have split up. How can you move on and still care or even love another when you are still so attached to someone in the past? How can anyone want out of a relationship when you still are so willing to play that role of the shoulder to cry on, the arms to hug, the ear to listen to? How do you differbtiate that or separate that from the feelings if love and intimacy that once burned so passionately, and for whatever reason, must die down?
 
I cannot comprehend it, and perhaps hurtfully I said outright to him "Who am I for you to be so concerned about?"

"that's what friends are for," he said at one point. But if that's what we all are, then there has to be distance, there has to be a point where you cannot care so much and cannot obsess so much about the other person's wellbeing that you constantly read up on what is happening on his blog.

I feel privileged to be so cared for, and to be so pampered with concern for my wellbeing.  I long for such care and such concern. I long to be hugged and comforted, but I cannot accept it from him, for my own sake, and for his own sake, especially when we are no longer in that kind of an intimate and loving relationship.