Green, assuming you do have alcoholism, it sounds like you understand the difference between you and your boyfriend. When he says you need to drink less, what he is asking for is for you to be what we like to call a normal drinker. Normal drinkers don't simply "drink less". They let go of the alcohol and what they felt with it after they've had their fill. They don't have an underlying reality that alcohol answers to (provides false answers to actually).
During my drinking years, I seemed to be functioning fine for the most part too. Not that there were not signs of problems. Alcohol took on a normality. I could feel it tiring me out more and more though on the inside. That knowledge stayed with me for years and there's a notion of waste associated with them now for me. The circumstances of my quitting are still a bit of a mystery to me, because I don't know how I did it. It seemed like there needed to be some kind of "event" to propel me into the efforts to quit, but there wasn't. I feel so lucky when it comes to that. I suppose my ultimately recognizing the problem took on the shape of an event for me, and I am sticking with that. If I hadn't done that, then maybe I would have gone on for a little longer, and who knows what would have happened later on.
You might be embarking on a decision phase like that one of your own.