Is marriage detrimental for spiritual life?

Many passages speak negatively about family life. Would it not be better to just skip the idea and use the time for improving our spiritual practice and go back to Godhead sooner?

Is marriage detrimental for spiritual life? If we study the scriptures, especially the Srimad Bhāgavatam, we can find many passages speaking negatively about family life, and recommending renounced life as a better path for the ones who are serious about self-realization. Taking this into consideration, would it not be better to just skip the idea altogether and instead use the time for improving our spiritual practice and go back to Godhead sooner, instead of getting bogged down in family life?

This question has two sides.

One side is that one who is genuinely renounced, bringing experience and renunciation from past lives, may do better if he skips married life since he will be able to use properly his time to cultivate his natural practice. This is, in general, the path recommended scriptures for spiritually advanced transcendentalists.

However, one who is not on this platform will have a hard time controlling his mind. Not only he will be forced to spend much of his energy just repressing his nature, but will probably end up developing an unhealthy relationship with the opposite sex. This will not only be a hazard to his mental health but will also undermine his spiritual practice since he will be spending most of his energy just repressing his mind and senses. Devotees in this situation can end up developing many different mental issues and not advancing very swiftly trying to follow a renounced life. Because in this case one is not fixed, there is also a great danger of falling down at any moment.

We can see that in the Bhagavad-gita Krsna offers two paths for controlling the senses: acting according to one's nature and experiencing a higher taste, and conversely condemns the path of simple repression. Advanced devotees experience this higher taste and thus lose interest in sense gratification. For one who is not on this platform, the path of regulated action following one's nature (following the system of karma-yoga) is the proper path.

When one is starting in spiritual life, there is a phase of great enthusiasm, that one can use to slingshot his spiritual life, by associating with seniors, distributing books and performing other services, studying the scriptures, traveling to the holy places, or even spending a period living in an asrama. After this initial enthusiasm wanes and the mind starts to give trouble, it's important to receive experienced guidance and make the transition to family life.

There are three platforms one can live on:

a) Truly spiritual

b) Pious

c) Sinful

Marriage exists to help people who are in a sinful platform to progress to a pious platform and from there have a chance of attaining a truly spiritual platform, opening the path for attaining true renunciation in the end.

We like to think of ourselves as very advanced, pure devotees, but the truth is that most of us come from very sinful backgrounds. We are not on the first platform but on the third. We are sinful persons who are trying to be devotees of Krsna. As a result, most of us are not capable of maintaining a truly spiritual platform yet. At the same time, without a good spouse, chances are we will not be able to maintain a pious platform either.

We can see frequently that men who refuse to marry, thinking that it's Maya or because they fear the responsibility end up just having affairs with different ladies, and ladies who have a similar mentality end up just having affairs with different men. This is the symptom of one who is not in a spiritual platform, but actually in a sinful platform. As Srila Prabhupāda explains, a sinful person can't approach God.

Marriage is an institution that exists exactly to help one ascend from a sinful to a pious platform, where he has a better chance of successfully practicing Krsna Consciousness and going back to Godhead.

Radhanatha Maharaja used to say to his married disciples: "Take care of this marriage as if your spiritual life depended on it because it does!" It may sound like a joke, but it's very true. For many of us, a successful marriage is practically the only chance we have for maintaining a pious life and being able to go back to Godhead in this life.