LionTigerBear: You are not alone. I used to feel exactly the same way, for very similar reasons you described. My parents were not abusive, but I felt I had to 'earn' their love, and in order to do that, I had to be perfect. That feeling transferred over to my perception of God, and it stayed that way up until about two months ago.
What changed it for me? Well, I started saying the rosary, which is a simple but lovely way of meditating on the mysteries of Christ's life. As I meditated in particular on the deep anguish, pain and betrayal He faced at the end of his life, it really started to sink in for me (for the first time) how much this Being must really love us-- to go through all that, simply for our own benefit. The saints tell us that He saw us all individually at that time-- He saw me, and He saw you (which was a revelation to me-- up till then I always thought His sacrifice was more of a "for all of collective humanity" thing, and that if it were just
my soul on the line, He would totally pass on the idea of dying for
me. I wasn't "worth" it, I thought, because I wasn't perfect. You can see how my thought process was a weeee bit skewed by low self esteem, LOL!).
Long story short: I think that the key to reversing almost 30 years of "I have to be perfect or God will hate/punish me" was that I stopped projecting my ingrained fears on Him-- I dropped my preconceived fears that, in all actuality, had nothing to do with Him but were all in my own head. And I replaced it with a contemplation of His
actions and words, i.e. the stuff He said/did in scripture. After all, that's how you get to know a person best, isn't it? You look at what they do, as it tells you who they are. We can never hope to comprehend the Incomprehensible, of course, but if you look at what we know of the life of Christ (and specifically His death), you can see that this was someone who gave without stipulations, who did not just give love and mercy to a chosen few, but instead freely associated with those who'd been condemned by society as immoral and bad-- the unworthy! The very sort of people we have spent our life fearing we are/were. Indeed, it's interesting to note that the only people he spoke to with austerity were those who saw themselves as blameless and sin-free-- in other words, the proud. Christ, being so humble, asks us to adopt humilty in lieu of such pride. But-- and this is important for someone like us to remember-- humilty does not equate to self-loathing; and if you're ever tempted to think otherwise, remember His command to us, to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. You're not going to do a good job of that if you absolutely loathe yourself, right? So we can infer from that that you are indeed lovable, or He wouldn't have given you such a command.
Whew! I'm getting pretty deep here.
I'll just wrap up by saying that I reinforced this change of heart I experienced by reading books and quotes from the saints, whose insights are simply invaluable. The one that's been most interesting so far has also been the most mystical (but what do you expect when you're dealing with God?): "Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul" It made me realize even more how vast God's love and mercy is for us.
Hope all that helps, but in any event, LionTigerBear, I hope you find the peace you're looking for soon! Us recovering perfectionists need all the help we can get, because boy, that thought process of "must be perfect, must earn love" is downright EXHAUSTING.
Sending hugs and prayers your way...
I'm not going to spend any more time trying to clarify it though, because I don't want to get into a doctrinal discussion here-- I am comfortable with my belief system, and not interested in changing your mind if you are comfortable with yours-- but suffice to say, my emotional issues were certainly not caused nor abetted by my present religion. 
: 
