The silent treatment doesn’t win the argument. It just moves it to a room nobody can talk in.

Going quiet feels like control, and for a while it is. The other person cannot reach the conversation, so they are left guessing, and their guess becomes a version of events you never get to correct. Nothing gets resolved in that silence, it only gets stored. Then it comes back weeks later attached to something unrelated.

Needing time before you can talk is fine, so say that instead of disappearing, because one sentence about needing an hour does the same job without the punishment. Then actually come back when the hour is up. One true thing said badly beats three days of nothing.