"I can fix him"

A lot of women get off on the idea of "flawed but ultimately good man is saved by woman's love and support." It's a whole trope.

Looked at from a more autistic angle (we are on Lemmy, after all), we can imagine women's options of men as a matrix. On one axis: is a jerk/is not a jerk. On the other: has shit together/does not have shit together.

Supposing you are a woman of average dating appeal in your market, you will initially be attracted to guys who have their shit together. This makes sense, and is the premise of your comment - why would a woman date a guy who doesn't have his shit together? But you run into a problem: guys who have their shit together and aren't jerks have a lot of options. They are either quickly removed from the dating market, or else they have no reason to settle down with any one particular woman - least of all one who is completely average. So an average woman looking for a long term partner among guys who have their shit together will find the market flooded with jerks.

After dating a few jerks and finding their jerk-ness doesn't improve with time, you will start considering your other option: guys who don't have their shit together, but are nice. Sure this guy always has a sink full of dirty dishes and has never thought of asking for a raise at his job - but he's appreciative enough that he has any woman in his life that you can feel secure knowing he won't beat you or belittle you or cheat on you or leave you. You just have to get him to do his dishes or whatever, which is a more solveable problem than training a jerk to not be a jerk.

I believe OPs story is how it originally worked in a lot of traditional marriages. Women stays home but keeps a close eye on any business activity her man does. Since he earns a lot of money when he's productive, she tries to keep him productive by pushing him in the right way. That's how marriage worked. That was a long time ago, however, and such a strategy would not make sense today because people rarely stay together long enough for such a game to pay off for the women.