jQuery a click event add class

Question

On the .click event of the <a> element I adding a class my-selected-item.

But the class only affect right at the .click event. I read that i can handle this with the function event.preventDefault. But this results that the <a> element doesn't fire the href="" link.

$(document).ready(function () {
    $("a.seaw-menu-item").click(function () {
        $(this).addClass('my-selected-item');
    });
});

It seems that I missing a little thing. Thanks for your help!

EDIT://

It is for a menu purpose.

<div class="myMenu">
  <a href="myPage.php?subpage=mySubPage1" class="seaw-menu-item">MenuItem 1</a>
  <a href="myPage.php?subpage=mySubPage2" class="seaw-menu-item">MenuItem 2</a>
  <a href="myPage.php?subpage=mySubPage3" class="seaw-menu-item">MenuItem 3</a>
</div>

Answer 1

I can only guess, but I believe you want something like this:

Add a div with id="someContainer" and the content of the page in the href (assuming same origin) will be loaded into it and the class set

Using your HTML:

    $(document).ready(function() {
      $("a.seaw-menu-item").on("click", function(e) {
        e.preventDefault();
        $("a.seaw-menu-item").removeClass('my-selected-item'); // remove from all links
        console.log("This would load:"+this.href+" into someContainer");
        $("#someContainer").load(this.href); // load the page
        $(this).addClass('my-selected-item'); // set the class on this link
      });
    });

a { text-decoration:none }
a.my-selected-item { text-decoration: underline }

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

<div class="myMenu">
  <a href="myPage.php?subpage=mySubPage1" class="seaw-menu-item">MenuItem 1</a>
  <a href="myPage.php?subpage=mySubPage2" class="seaw-menu-item">MenuItem 2</a>
  <a href="myPage.php?subpage=mySubPage3" class="seaw-menu-item">MenuItem 3</a>
</div>
<div id="someContainer"></div>