maybe I need to ask again...?

Your question was understood and answered adequately. You didn't need to ask again, I suspect you are just refusing to accept the answers given.

The universe began as a singularity - no matter, only energy. It was all that existed. The universe did not expand "into" space. It IS space.

The void that is space has always existed and is infinite, you don't need proof of this other than existence, it it didn't exist nor would we. Don't think of universe as THE universe, think of it as A universe, of which there could be many. All the matter in our universe could be condensed into something the size of a grape an extremely dense grape mind you. Look up the construction af the atom, if you find this hard to believe, see how far away the electrons orbit is from the nucleus. If all of these orbiting electrons were to collapse matter would take up very little space, research this subject separately. As density increases so does its gravitational force pulling in all matter around it becoming denser and smaller all the time. This is how black holes are formed, becoming so dense that even light can't escape it's gravity. Now, here's the part that's theoretical, at some point this dense mass or black hole could explode, like the Big Bang, spewing all its matter out again into space creating a universe. This could be happening all the time, over and over again. Awesome question. I like the tv programmes by Brian cox, he explains things in easy terms for non physicists, he's also quite funny to watch.

You seem to be thinking that the space must exist first, which is then taken up by the Universe. What the answers have been trying to tell you is that the space *IS* the Universe. Space, as well as all the matter and energy (and dark matter and dark energy, if they really exist). The space that all these occupy is part of the Universe itself, and not something separate from it.

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As hard as this is to comprehend, I understand your difficulty because I (and probably most everyone else) share it.

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As far as out knowledge extends, the universe expanded rapidly from a single point. All of the matter in our universe today was condensed in that single point. The expansion is often called the Big Bang.

We do not know if there was any 'matter' or 'space' that our universe expanded into.