Ten minutes doesn't sound like much. In the middle of an argument, it can feel like an eternity, or like nowhere near enough time to actually resolve anything. Neither reaction is really the point. Ten minutes isn't meant to solve the argument. It's meant to bring your body back to a state where you're capable of having the conversation at all.
Why ten minutes specifically
Physiological research on conflict has found that once someone is genuinely flooded, heart rate elevated, stress hormones active, it takes a minimum of roughly twenty minutes for the body to fully return to baseline, but the sharpest drop in that curve happens in the first ten. In practice, ten minutes is usually enough to get out of the most reactive state, the point where you're most likely to say something you don't mean, even if you're not fully calm yet. It's also short enough that it doesn't feel like abandonment to the person waiting for you to come back.
What actually happens in those ten minutes matters
Not all pauses are equal. Ten minutes spent silently rehearsing your argument, or scrolling your phone reading things that keep you keyed up, doesn't lower your heart rate much at all. What works is something that directly engages your body: slow breathing with a longer exhale than inhale, a short walk, physically leaving the room where the tension happened. The goal is calming your nervous system, not building a better case for round two.
Say what the pause is for
A silent ten-minute disappearance can read as stonewalling even when that's not the intention. The difference between a pause and a wall is usually just a sentence: "I need ten minutes so I don't say something I don't mean, I'll come back and we'll keep talking." That one line tells your partner the pause is in service of the relationship, not an exit from it.
Actually come back
The ten minutes only works if there's a return. An open-ended pause, one where nobody sets an expectation to reconnect, tends to just become avoidance. Setting even a rough time, "let's talk again after dinner," turns the pause into a tool instead of a way to dodge the conversation entirely.
Check in with yourself before round two
After ten minutes, it's worth a quick physical check before diving back in: is your heart rate actually back down, can you picture your partner's side of things without your stomach tightening. If not, that's fine, take a few more minutes. Going back in while you're still flooded usually restarts the exact cycle the pause was meant to interrupt.
Ten minutes won't fix the underlying issue. What it reliably does is stop the argument from getting worse than it needs to, which is often the difference between a disagreement you both move past and one that leaves a mark.