From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishcontent yourself with (doing) somethingcontent yourself with (doing) somethingSATISFIEDto do or have something that is not what you really wanted, but is still satisfactory Mr Lal has been asking for more responsibility, but has had to content himself with a minor managerial post. → content
Examples from the Corpus
had to content ... with• The intrepid manager had to content himself with numbering his reserve teams.• He had to content himself with the fact that it was mostly a one-way affair. 