frustration with pawns . I don't know how to fight against this

The London is an absolutely superb opening. Why don't I play it? I'm about 1900 to 1950 FIDE (I'm getting worse fast) and you need to be of at least master strength to play it well. It's extremely transpositional. That means flexible .... you can make it do different things. Unfortunately it's played a lot by near beginners and they don't know enough to play it.

That means there's a very effective strategy many people use against the London. They count on the fact that people play the London not cos they're good but cos they're scared.

I'm trying to recall exactly what was going on in my mind for f3-f4, which many have kindly pointed out.
Honestly, I usually castle to king's side when playing white and try to never move those pawns until much much later in the game, if at all.
But some of the other advice i was given in the thread, to go out and attack when i see the pawn wedges developing... this was my (admittedly feeble) attempt to be able to attack the wedge my opponent was building on f5-g4-h5. 
My own logic starts to fall apart as I write this because if I had hoped to break up the wedge I should not have played f4, I should have taken the black pawn on g4? NOT saying any of this line was the correct thing to do in this situation, I guess I'm coming to realize that even if I played this incorrectly, I did not play it according to the plan (break up the wedge) that I had in mind.

I appreciate the patience you all are showing me in explaining this.

f3-f4 was ok provided you had a plan on how to open the Q side and get an advantage. Otherwise, open the K-side by taking a pawn there.

The idea is that since black made few piece moves, his pieces aren't co-ordinating and his king is relatively open to attack, so you try to break through early, with your better developed pieces. Give up a piece if necessary ... just smash through. But you do have to have it worked out well and that takes practice. And the only way to get practice is to be brave and try it next time it happens!

thank you for the very helpful feedback through all of this. Honestly until a few days ago I didn't know what a wedge was (I did know about storms but wedges.. :-) )

Anyway, it's a learning process. Like you said, next time I see it...

So a couple digestible notes without engine analysis but what i think is practical and easy to understand. My suggestions are kind of ordered from simpler to more nuanced and difficult:
When your opponent is less developed, generally it will benefit you to open the center. The same will also benefit you when they are attacking on one side of the board. Both of those things in combination should lead you to the idea of pushing an early e4 break, securing more space and squares for your pieces.

Secondly Nh2 was very problematic in this case; its stuck on the edge with essentially no moves - try to consider the long term prospects of where the pieces can move to (which may be difficult at this level, so at least consider the immediate squares available from where you are moving the piece to). That leads me to Nd2, which lets it move over towards the queenside with Nb3 soon, as well as making e4 even *more* attractive (since you can recapture with that knight and have it look very nice in the center).
next this f3 then f4 push. I don't mind f3 really, maybe a waste of time but not strictly bad, but f4 makes a gaping hole on e4, which your opponent immediately took advantage of, as well as locking up the structure, effectively ensuring that your pieces will never get space to move (the knight on h2 is crying).
all that being said, you did still have the opportunity to maneuver your pieces to better squares even after the lock your opponent got. The knight can go from h2 - f1 - d2 - b3, and the dark bishop can go from g3 - e1 - c3 or look for a nicer square on that more open diagonal at a later time, or you could have considered sacrificing a pawn with f4 - f5 to give it a nice diagonal to sit on. These are very difficult reroutes to see at your level I'd say, but the simpler principle I'd try to remember is to just move the pieces towards the open side of the board when youre stuck like this, even if its a backwards or dumb looking move (Nf1 probably looks kind of silly taken in isolation, but its the only way to get the knight to a nice spot - if you just think "how can i move the knight towards the open part?" you'll find it).

Lastly, and this is admittedly a more nuanced and difficult concept probably, but I would have castled short here even though you might think the pawns are scary - that side of the board is all locked up, so your opponent cant make progress either. This also can embolden you to push the queenside pawns and try to open up the board over there, since you wont be second guessing pushing pawns in front of your king.

The first mistake was 5. e3 rather than playing e4. The controlling the center is one of the most important things in chess, and black playing with pawns and leaving the center unguarded, you should play more aggressively in the center. This is why black usually plays Nf6, to control e4.

I think what we are doing is trying to get you to have patience with yourself. Don't give up at this stage. Try to identify what is going on in your mind. If you leave yourself with no visible way of making progress and are reduced to moving pieces back and forth, it's possible that your opponent, knowing that, will be able to work out a plan if they are capable of smashing through your pawns. So try always to leave yourself something you can attempt by way of attack. Playing f3 to f4 effectively closes the kingside to you. Taking the g pawn leaves it open and you can castle, giving you a position that seems safe for the time being and you have a rook on the f file. If my memory from a few days ago is correct, the f file is half open, meaning that only one side has a pawn on it.

If you close the kingside you have to have a definite method of opening the queenside to your advantage. If you can't see a way to do that you probably need to take the g pawn in any case. From memory, your opponent wasted moves pushing pawns and you developed quite well. I would have tried to attack early in the game when the difference between your development and your opponent's was at a maximum. I would probably have tried to open files in the centre quickly and bring my pieces to bear effectively and quickly. This is from memory and it's late and I'm tired after a busy day. A 74 year old like me needs his beauty sleep. So I hope my words may have inspired you somewhat to try to reassess the way you actually think during a chess game. You must try to be brave and confident but careful too and learn to assess different plans and work out which are better. Only that will put you in situations you can learn from. Best wishes.

Hey my friend 🙂

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I cba to read the comments to check if this was already said but c4 and e4 pawn breaks would've been good

I didn't want to be specific because it seems like a case of general confidence boosting is necessary as well as creating an awareness of when to defend, when to attack, when to hold steady, when to swap off and simplify and when not to. All that is already incredibly complicated. I suspect that going through old games would be a miserable way to try to teach ..... bringing people face to face with what they may see as their failure. When I teach chess, which is rarely, we just approach a position .... any position .... and explaining what I see in the position and how it might be approached in practice automatically highlights ideas about how pieces move and co-ordinate together. Chess is all about prioritisation and weighing differences together. It's a difficult game to learn but sometimes those who seem slowest to start with can make surprisingly effective improvement in their play, by changing how they think and by learning to bring all their abilities to bear. So I'm off to a face to face chess club now, with people of various abilities.