As a child of a family with some similar dynamics, I can tell you how I handled those kinds of situations: I started working in international development and now live in Indonesia.
Yeah - isn’t it marvelous! It was so damned important that not a single one of us knew who the fuck was even playing! I almost shit when I surfed past the game sometime after 7 pm and saw that it was USC.
Yeah, our family is totally fucked up. But I think most families are fucked up in one way or another.
Fortunately, the hostess was my nice sister, so she won’t sweat it too much, if at all.
And for those of you who think I should try to mine this situation for humor in the future. Uh, well, let’s say I’ve made that kind of mistake before! 
This has actually happened in my family, in previous years. Due to extraneous factors (such as ‘barking madness’), family holidays were always hell, on my mother in particular. I would have felt sorrier for her, except she took it out on everyone else. So, my mother hated going to her mother’s for Christmas; my father hated seeing my mother hate going to her mother’s for Christmas; and my sister and I were both teenagers at about the same time, which not only meant that we were starting to develop opinions about how much we hated family Christmases, but we were experts at sulking and sniping at everyone around us.
The car was never turned around. My father just drove white-knuckled until we got there, trying to keep the argument to sub-critical levels. When I was 17, I decided I was old enough to begin drinking through Christmas dinner until the relatives got bearable; before that I had handheld video game systems. Actually, I still have handheld video game systems, and now I can buy my own hard liquor.
If I had been the driver, and the rest of the family genuinely didn’t care about the fight, I would have turned around “to get the hostess gift” and left BOTH combatants there. If there was a second car available, either or both of them could have joined us later. College students are old enough to take care of themselves – if she wanted to go for a walk, drive/take a cab out to dinner by herself, or buy a bus ticket back to school, that’s her business, and she’s really not going to die without supervision.
If I were stuck in the car with one of the combatants who was hammering me, trying to get me to say she was right, I probably would have said the same thing as A Priori Tea, and it probably would have gotten me in the same amount of trouble. 
The family no longer attempts to include me on those sorts of arguments, because they know if they push me I am going to tell each and every one of them how wrong they are and how idiotically they’re acting, and no one will get any satisfaction at all.
Not too different from the OP, actually. There were several knock-down drag out fights, mostly carried out over email, regarding fairly trivial details about the wedding planning. These were usually started by my mother in law, but my wife couldn’t help rising to the bait and they always ended up blown way out of proportion to the original issue.
I think the most spectacular was over the fact that my wife had planned to have a smallish wedding shower a couple of days before the wedding (at the request of friends, since most everyone was coming from far away and it couldn’t be done sooner) and didn’t invite an aunt on my mother-in-law’s side of the family. Note that my wife and said aunt are not close at all, said aunt wasn’t going to be in town until the day after the bridal shower, and my mother-in-law hates her like poison. Allegations were hurled that my family was dominating the wedding guest list complete with hard numbers (with no basis in reality), confusing threats to not get her (mother-in-law’s) hair done with my wife before the wedding tossed about, multitudes of passive aggressive barbs flew back and forth, it was crazy. There were a few other dust-ups over what type of vases would be on the tables at the reception and whether or not my wife would buy a veil. As with the OP, I suspect they were all about control and not about the actual issue, but they lead to some very surreal emails at the very least.
I wisely stayed as far out of it as I could get, apart from occasionally imploring my wife-to-be to just delete the latest email and not respond (it never worked). After the wedding, mother-in-law settled right down and things are fine. 
I wouldn’t have even driven the arguing pair home. I find arguments really distracting when I am driving and even when my kids were young they could understand that if I told them to wait until we stopped to have the argument, they were to shut up and wait until they were out of the car. Most of the time the argument was forgotten by then. If they wouldn’t stop I would pull over to let them sort it out, but no motion while screaming, crying and swearing are happening.
In your case I would have dumped the arguers first time I went home. If they are over 18 and can’t control themselves in a car I am driving they can get out, right there. Hell they aren’t even paying a fare, so have less rights than a taxi passenger.
Didn’t read past the first few sentences. I’da gotten drunk and watched the game.
FIGHT ON!
Just in case you ever wondered the proper incubation period for resurrecting an unpleasant moment, ten days worked just fine.
So we’re drinking coffee and reading the paper. Just a nice pleasant Saturday morning. 2 of the kids are away on a school trip, and the 3d will be heading back to college tomorrow. Apparently that is the time my wife decides to ask me why I couldn’t be supportive of her when her kids were being so disrespectful towards her.
20 minutes later or so, I told her however reprehensibly she thinks I acted that day, I think she acted just as poorly, and ask where she wants the conversation to go. To which she suggests we consider divorce and property settlements. I thought of posting to ask you folks what you thought of my proposal…
Hope you all are having a slightly more pleasant weekend than I.
Oh yeh - last night we took my sister and her hubby out to dinner. I thought everyone had a nice time. Perhaps that is what brought the topic up.
Your wife needs to see a therapist. Her reactions are way out of line to the situation in my humble opinion. My wife has had similar odd reactions, (usually related to her peri-menapause), but hers aren’t as extreme as your wifes and she usually apologizes to the offended party upon reflection. Especially if EVERYONE is telling her she is off base. Sounds like your wife has been stewing over this since it happened!
My wife and I don’t agree on everything and that is fine, just part of being married. Sometimes you just have to accept that you can’t modify your spouses opinion. But to go from that position to asking for a divorce is a bit…er…uh… over the top to say the least.
And for the record based on what you wrote here, I don’t believe you acted reprehensible in this nor do I think your children were disrespectful.
Seriously? She wants to divorce over THIS? Are things okay in your marriage apart from this incident?
Yeah, this. Unless you’re leaving out some important detail, such as when you told your wife she was an evil harridan and you were sorry you’d ever met her, then I honestly can’t understand her reaction here. Divorce over not supporting her in what sounds to have been one of the stupidest and most petty arguments ever? Ten days after it happened? Dude. Just… dude.
Get her to a doctor or a counselor. Or both.
Well, to be fair, realize you are getting just one side of things here - mine.
I’ve posted before about disagreements we’ve had, petty or not.
22 years hasn’t been exactly a smooth road, but I had thought we had agreed upon some tolerable stasis. I’d be kidding if I told you there was any great romance between us. At the very least, we make a better economic unit together than apart, and we are both such opinionated jerks it is hard to imagine many other folks being as willing to put up with either one of us as we have been.
Our youngest is a HS junior. We had spoken about downsizing our home at that time. Perhaps that would be an appropriate time to call it quits.
I think she is worried, tho, because she has primarily stayed at home the past 16 years or so, and is scared of the potential need to go out and get a paying job. She did mention something a couple of weeks back about thinking she might be beginning menopause. Yeah, I’m sure that will clear everything up. And then maybe I’ll get a pony!
Wow. Not only “issues” with control and the college-student daughter, but serious marriage issues, too.
Sorry for jumping in, but I have to say this: if you are able to cooly say that the only reason you’re staying married is to form a better economic unit, it’s no wonder there are family fights.
Ummm. . . what? Was that part about the divorce serious?
I was going to comment on the original OP since I just saw this thread, but now I’m just too stunned. Wow. Family drama indeed.
I’m sorry to hear about your situation, Dinsdale. I hope things improve.
Yeah, probably quite fair to say we “fell out of love” some time ago. But I thought we were mutually willing to continue some form of peaceful coexistence.
Maybe we should have gotten divorced years ago. Maybe we were both too lazy and chicken to do so. And maybe we’ve both just gotten tired of taking what we consider to be crap from each other.
Oh - and when I say “economic” - I’m talking about more than just money. I thought we made a pretty good team, dividing up chores, running a household, and raising some decent kids. I’d imagine both of us would have proportionately less cash if we split, but that’s not a huge deal to me.
Oh for the days when families drove in station wagons, and there was a big red button (not blue or yellow or orange) on the left side of the dash. (Of course it was no great hell never knowing when some passenger might be ejected from the car in front of you.) Today it is all air bags and seat belts and restraint systems, so there is no quick and simple solution to in-car squabbles. You have to ask yourself, do I want to spend the remaining years of my life with this person?
Could it be she thinks there’s a pattern in which you don’t support her when she’s dealing with the kids?
A lot of people consider seeing a therapist as a very large step. Do you two have a friend or family member who you both trust who can help you sort this out between you? That tends to seem friendlier and more informal than suggesting you need marriage therapy.
I’d be willing to bet there’s more going on than just the incident in the OP (which, by the way, I think you handled correctly). If you can find out what it is and sort it out, rather than just letting things fester, it will be easier for both of you.
From what I’ve seen of you here, Dinsdale, you’re a good man, a good father, and a good husband in that you really do try to do the best you can by your family. I respect you for that. You’re also sensible enough not to let a problem grow so large it can’t be fixed.
It sounds to me as though you’d both thought you could “hang in there” till the nest had emptied – and now both of you are thinking, well, no, maybe we can’t. If tensions are that high between the two of you – and between your wife and this kid or that, or yourself and this kid or that --** no one** will benefit from your sticking things out to meet some arbitrary deadline – esp. not the kid for whose “sake” you’re staying together.
Yeah, see a counselor, act like adults, etc., but face the situation as it is, not as you would like it to have been.
twicks, who as the youngest child had a solo front-row seat to the last couple of years of my parents’ marriage – which wasn’t a pretty sight
Awww, shit, Dinsdale, I’m so sorry!
Only do this if you have a friend or family member you wouldn’t mind alienating. Couples counselors are availabe to stand in that minefield so your friends and family don’t have to.
I’m really sorry to hear how things are going, Dinsdale.