One refrain I've heard on women choosing partners is that women "wait at the finish line".

The implication of this, presumably, is that women are selfish for their standards. That women who reject men for not already having certain traits and assets are unreasonable for doing so.

But is this really the case?

One sad reality of the modern age is that a plenty of men don't act like adults. One would think that it would be common sense to put your dirty clothes in a hamper or to take out the trash at regular intervals without having to be reminded, but many adult men don't do this. Many man would also prefer to push to see what they can get away with like overgrown toddlers than communicate with their partner to come up with a fair division of labor.

Another sad reality is that women are not a solid vector for a man's change. Since the woman is the man's equal and not his mother, she can't actually enforce any change that she'd want him to make (such as acting like an adult instead of a shitty teenager). And if a man exhibits a behavior at the start of a relationship, he will most likely continue to exhibit this behavior until the relationship ends, regardless of how much his partner hates it. In fact, many men will assume that if a woman gets with him, that he's good enough forever and therefore no longer has to further grow or mature in any way.

Another is that many men also don't understand that it's important to save money and built your career in order to have the most comfortable retirement you can down the line (while doing what you can to have a work-life balance, of course). If he doesn't have a good job now, he likely won't 5 years from now. Maybe that'll change, but it'll only be through his own effort - his partner won't have anything to do with it.

Therefore, it's only logical for a woman to look for men who are already fully actualized, or at least men who have the momentum to get there on their own. Women aren't going to be the reason a man grows and improves, so women should instead assume that the state a man is in when they get together is the state the man will stay in years down the road, for better or worst.

Therefore, women don't wait at the finish line. They are the finish line.