I was afraid of pushing d4 because I thought I would lose material and space. He just ganged up on that square from move 1 and now I know why. When would you have pushed d4?
As for getting mated: I've looked over it several times myself and yeah there were a few pretty clear reasons that I got mated. I certainly could have won the game but the pawn grabbing on his queenside when he was all over my castle was mindless in retrospect.
10.c4 is a mistake.instead Nbd2 or Be3 or Re1 was better
12.Re2 was not best either.
19.c5 allowed d5 which is not good.
Here black is already better.
And after you gave him a chance to get too much activity which became an attack.
Just keep trying to avoid positional blunders.
But in the beggining I think you played ok
I just put this through Stockfish after the line that begins with a 9. d4 push and I come out up ~4.00 with total control of the center by my queen. I totally miscalculated in the game and it led to that broken pawn structure. I felt like I would be down about a pawn if I pushed it that early and that was clearly the move I should have made.
I'm reviewing this game currently but since this one was one I felt I really should have had I would like some feedback as to what I could have done differently. I have a good three pawn advantage at one point and then quickly fell victim to a checkmate.