Consider a cloud of stella gas and dust becoming a star. We begin with maximum gravitational potential and lower this potential into a star. As this potential lowers there is space-time contraction due to relativity.
This assumes a common misunderstanding about gravity, that it is proportional solely to mass density and distance. What seems to be a more accurate description is that the force of gravity is proportional to the absolute "amount" of mass and distance.
Consider the Earth and Jupiter. The earth has a greater mass density than Jupiter and yet the gravitational force/influence of Jupiter is far greater.
True, the gravitational potential at the surface of the stellar gas cloud would change as it condenses, however rather than lowering its over all potential, the gravitational potential at its surface would be increased while the potential at a distance consistent with its surface prior to condensing would remain the same. (This assumes that no mass is lost in the process.)
Unlike the other three forces of nature, which give off energy when the force potential lowers, gravity does not appear to give off energy when it lowers potential. We don't see photons like in electron transitions. But there needs to be conservation of energy. Wit gravity, the potential energy appears to go into distance contraction and time dilation. Time dilation contains potential energy.
Here again the highlighted portion above makes an assumption we cannot confirm. We do not as yet know enough of how mass emerges, within the context of either GR or QM. And, since we do at least know that mass and our current understanding of gravitation are linked, without a better understanding of mass, we cannot really better understand the origin of gravitation, or how any necessary balance is maintained.
Although we often explore our understanding of gravity with hypotheticals suggesting changes in gravitational potential, we have yet to observe any supporting phenomena. It might be that a better model for understanding gravitational force is through the overall balance that seems to exist in the system (in this case the universe), as a whole.
I have intentionally left time dilation and length contraction out. While there is some evidence that supports time dilation, we have no evidence of directly measurable length contraction. Even what we know of time dilation cannot be assumed absolute as we do not know enough about either quantum or general relativistic conditions, to rule out all other possible causes.
----------
On the subject of time...
It would seem that there must be some underlying truth to what we experience as time. It would be unreasonable to assume that it would not exist without " us" to experience and measure it. What that underlying truth might be is at present beyond us and may perhaps be forever beyond our understanding. We are trapped within the frame work of the limitations of our own ability to perceive the world around us.
As many have suggested earlier in this thread, what we know of time is a product of our ability to compare past and present. It is a matter of awareness. We are aware of change, even as it happens. Time as we experience it is an artifact of our ability to be both aware of change as it happens and project that change into the future.
For the most part, time as a human experience is an issue for philosophical debate, as it has been for a very long time. What underlies that debate and experience, we may never be truly able to understand. All we can say at present is that it appears to move only in one direction toward the what we call the future.