While the Living Circle doesn't discourage sex (though some Air temple devotees, particularly the most purely intellectual ones, don't go for it because it messes up their thought processes, and they spend their days trying to become purely creatures of the mind) (no, Crane is not one of those--he likes plants, remember!), the temples do discourage handfasting/marriage and having children, because legal relationships and children tend to distract the mind and spirit from complete devotion to the gods. Moreover, such ties to a particular place mean that a dedicate is not free to simply go where s/he is ordered to go. This wasn't an issue in the first Circle quartet because the dedicates we knew were bound to teach the four, but most dedicates--including ours, in the past--were sent anywhere the temple council saw fit to send them. A spouse and kids would interfere.