The silent treatment isn’t honesty. It’s making someone guess what they did.

Withdrawal communicates that something is wrong and nothing about what. It feels like restraint, as though you are at least not saying anything cruel, while the other person runs through possibilities and gets no confirmation, which is its own kind of pressure. Punishment delivered by silence is still punishment, with the reasons withheld.

If you need time, say that you need time and when you will come back. One line turns a freeze-out into a pause. Then come back and say the actual thing, which is almost always smaller than the silence made it.