I recognize that you really want to do things the way you always have, but in a new version of Word. No one here speaks for Microsoft. We are your fellow users and can only speculate.

Graham has told you how to move your document back to the Word 2010 environment so you can use a manual page break without the paragraph mark. You could create a template set up this way and use that as the basis for new documents.

I've told you how to break to a new page without an additional paragraph mark. That is what "Page Break before" formatting does. Doing it this way makes for more easily edited documents. Stefan has given additional information on how to set up a style.

In this discussion, you have had advice from people with a total experience with Word in excess of 70 years, possibly 100 years. You do not have to take that advice. We can only describe the Word that is and help you deal with it.