content oneself with

content (oneself) with (someone or something)

To be happy or satisfied with something, often something that is lacking or disappointing in some way. In order to get health insurance, I had to abandon acting and content myself with a boring office job. If you're trying to save money, you'll need to content yourself with the clothes you already own.
See also: content
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

content oneself with someone or something

to be satisfied with (usually less of) someone or something. You will just have to learn to content yourself with fewer nice vacations now that you have kids entering college.
See also: content
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • a/the feel of (something)
  • a necessary evil
  • (I) wouldn't (do something) if I were you
  • (you've) got to get up pretty early in the morning to (do something)
  • a straw will show which way the wind blows
  • a crack at (someone or something)
  • all right
  • (you) wanna make something of it?
  • all for the best
  • a thing of the past
References in periodicals archive
Such a fantasy seems to acknowledge the impracticality of a physical entanglement--but also its conceivability--and the need to content oneself with a fantasy.
Shakespeare in love (the sequel)
There are however points in his argument where I would wish for greater theoretical sophistication: to content oneself with Giddens's definition of feminism as a 'politics of choice' is to assume a subjective agency that much feminist theory challenges, or at the very least explores.
The Radical Subject: social Change and the Self in Recent German Autobiography
Short of finding a copy of the original Voyage d'Exploration en Indo-Chine of 1873 or 1885, or Le Tour du Monde of 1869-71, one had to content oneself with relying upon Osborne's prose to imagine the works of the artists who accompanied the explorers.
A Pictorial Journey on the Old Mekong: Cambodia, Laos and Yunnan
What was needed was to "seek to improve the mother of the family by teaching the girls to become less idle and as a consequence better advisors than those today."(87) In response, the firm followed the same pedagogical strategy it had used with boys a half-century earlier: it introduced home economics programs [ecoles menageres] for schoolgirls in 1906 with the motto, "To know how to content oneself with little, there is wisdom and truth."(88)
Schools and the paternalist project at Le Creusot, 1850-1914