Working from first principles of special relativity and using a version of the equivalence principle, an hypothesize that an objects mass is a function of its distance to other objects is presented. Further it is posited that there is a correlation between this mass variation and gravitational time dilation in general relativity. Additionally due to the Schwarzschild metric the mass variation also distorts the spatial components of the metric which contributes to gravitational lensing. Hence this approach could be used to explain the unseen mass increase due to gravitational lensing of current dark matter exploration. This leads naturally to the hypothesis of the early rapid clumping in the early universe to produce the ‘cosmic web’ and dark matter halos necessary to produce galaxy formation. Certain electrically neutral MACHOS are suggested. These might include possible boson stars or primordial black holes. Radio emission spectrum would also be expected to be higher than average for various dark matter regions. We also expect that the theory is consistent with the observation that not all galaxies exhibit dark matter since not all galaxy clumping originated from the cosmic web. We propose mathematically how the theory can fit naturally with Einsteins field equation. Finally we propose a simple principle for terrestrial measurement of the theory